The Anomaly
by flaks314
Summary: "The Animorphs have been fighting for half a year now, but they know that whatever they do, the Yeerks will just keep coming. Us humans are just too useful for them to ignore. But what if there's a way to take away what they're here for?" Written to feel as much like a real Animorphs book as possible. Sequel to The Hunt. Series starts after book 22 (the David arc).
1. Chapter 1

**Preface/notes**

* * *

Last year, I released _The Hunt_ here. The idea behind it was to branch off from the original series after book 22, the end of the David arc, in such a way that the stories, writing style, and tacky book titles stay true to the originals. People seemed to like it, some even asking for a sequel (this is a little late, but thanks so much for the feedback and reddit gold!) so I decided to continue and make a bit of a series. It took way longer than I wanted it to, but better late than never, right?

Like all Animorphs books, you could start from here. Chapter 1 reads a bit like a "Previously, on _Animorphs…_ " segment for that reason. But I would recommend that you read them in sequence. In that case, you can safely skip chapter 1 without missing anything if it bores you.

The series so far:

1: _The Hunt_ (Rachel)

2: _The Anomaly_ (Cassie)

3: _The Rescue_ (Jake)

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Font test: ≺ **This sentence should be surrounded in thought-speak quotes.≻** If it isn't, try changing your browser's character encoding or font until it does. Unfortunately, fanfiction blocks regular less-than/greater-than symbols.

* * *

 **Chapter 1**

* * *

My name is Cassie.

It was a Wednesday, just after class. The first Wednesday after my best friend Rachel's and her younger sister Jordan's funeral. The second Wednesday after they ran away.

I live in a farmhouse just outside the city, at the edge of a national forest. It's about a one and a half hour's walk away from school, so I used to take the bus or cycle home. Or at least, I'd pretend to. I have some… unconventional ways of getting around. But ever since what happened to Rachel and Jordan, my dad had insisted on dropping me off and picking me up.

See, the official story is that Rachel was dealing cocaine, and when the police started suspecting her, she was killed by whoever was in charge of the operation. And because I'd been friends with her for so long, the police suspected I was also involved somehow. The night before Rachel died, they raided my home with a battering ram and automatic weapons, and my parents and I had to spend half the night in an interrogation room while they searched our house for anything suspicious.

It was almost like they made a point of trashing the place, too. By the time we were up and out of bed, our front door was already lying flat on the floor. And while we were gone, they literally turned every drawer in the house upside down, tore all our pillows open with knives, broke fragile things like vases and picture frames… and so on. They even left the fridge open.

They didn't find any drugs, of course. But that's not _really_ what they were after. They were actually looking for Rachel and Jordan. And, mind you, not to save them from their imaginary drug dealers. They only made it seem like they were after drugs because it gave them a good excuse to search every nook of my house. Good enough for everyone to believe it.

So, for as far as my parents knew, my best friend was involved with drug dealing and was killed because she knew too much. They were worried sick that I would be next.

They tried their best to hide it from me. After all, I'd just lost my best friend. They didn't want to upset me further by scaring me. But it was obvious.

Dad was already waiting for me when I left the school building. He waved me over.

"Hey, Dad," I said as I threw my backpack in the back and then sat in the passenger seat.

"Hey, Cass," he responded. "How was school?"

"Fine, I guess." I didn't really mean it.

School was weird without Rachel. Jake was still there, but we never hung out together all that much in school. Jake and I are… well, we like each other. As in _like_. But we're both embarrassed about it. Or at least _I_ am, so we kept it hidden. Although that wasn't our only reason for not wanting to be seen in public together too often.

Worse than feeling lonely, everyone kept reminding me of what happened. Looking at me pityingly, or coming up to me to give me their condolences or ask if I wanted to talk.

I didn't. I just wanted to forget.

"How about we go… see Rachel before going home?" Dad asked me after a couple of seconds.

See what I mean?

It wasn't fair to say no, though. Rachel had spent so much time at my place over the years that my parents had bonded with her as well. And it's not like Dad knew that I watched her get trampled to death.

He stroked my hair. He always does that when he's trying to comfort me.

I sighed, and nodded weakly.

Dad tried to make conversation with me a couple times on the way to the cemetery, but I only gave automatic, single-word responses. He'd given up by the time we sat down in front of Rachel and Jordan's graves. I was completely zoned out, thinking about what had actually happened.

It all started about half a year ago. Rachel and I were just going home after having been to the mall. I hate shopping, but it was Rachel's favorite pastime, so I'd gone along with her. We ran into Jake and his friends Marco and Tobias, and together we all stupidly decided to cut through the shady, abandoned construction site near the mall on our way home.

No, that's not when we made our first drug deal. Or did anything illegal for that matter, aside from trespassing on the construction site I guess. I wish it'd been that simple.

It was when we met our first alien. And by that I don't mean someone from another country. He was an Andalite.

It was immediately obvious that he was an alien. Andalites look like a cross between a deer, a horse, a scorpion, a human, and a crab. They have four hooved legs, two arms that are a little shorter than human arms but are much the same otherwise, and a scorpion's tail with a very sharp blade at the end. Their head is almost human, except they don't have a mouth, and they have two eyes on stalks like a crab in addition to two human-like eyes. Also, they're blue.

Instead of talking, they use what we call thought-speak to communicate. Telepathy. It can be directed to anyone, humans included, and because it's based on thoughts there's no language barrier. Or at least, I think that's why we could talk to him. I don't actually know. But he spoke English.

His name was Elfangor. His ship had been damaged in battle near Earth, forcing him to land. The battle had been to determine the future of Earth and humankind.

Fortunately, the Andalites were the good guys in that battle. We wouldn't have lasted long if we'd run into the bad guys first.

Unfortunately, he was hurt. Dying. All other Andalite warriors in the general vicinity of Earth were already dead.

The good guys had lost.

In a last-ditch effort, he tried to give _us_ a fighting chance. Five scared teenagers. He told us everything he could about what was going on, and then gave us a very neat little ability using some Andalite tech. Or at least, it would've been neat, if we wouldn't have to use it to fight all the time.

He told us that Earth is being invaded by the Yeerk Empire. That it'd been going on for years already. Humanity as a whole doesn't know about it because the Yeerks don't want us to, and they're very good at hiding.

Yeerks aren't very scary on their own. They look almost exactly like regular Earth slugs, although they're a bit bigger. They're blind, deaf, and can't move very quickly.

But what they _can_ do is very scary. They can take control of most lifeforms big enough for a Yeerk to fit between their brain and skull, turning them into what we call Controllers. Humans qualify.

And when I say control, I mean _control_. A Yeerk completely takes over its host's body, to the point where the host can't even control what their senses focus on. They can also access all of their host's memories and sense what they're thinking, so they can do a very good job pretending to be their host. That's how they can be invading us without anyone knowing it's even going on.

Worst of all, hosts remain conscious. They're forced to sense everything that their Yeerk makes them sense, and live through everything that their Yeerk makes them do. Hosts can communicate with their Yeerk and kind of sense its emotions, but that's about all they can do.

It isn't _all_ great for the Yeerk either, though. Yeerks have a hard time ignoring what their host is thinking, so they constantly get to live through their host's fantasies of killing them in the most horrible and painful ways they can imagine.

My enemy or not, I guess I've come to sympathize with the Yeerks a little. A couple of weeks ago, I got stuck in the middle of the national forest that borders our city with a young girl, Karen, who'd been taken host by the Yeerk Aftran nine-four-two. She found out that I was one of the people fighting the Yeerks, by following me home after a… particularly bad battle, and spied on me for a while. Then she ran into an angry black bear, I somehow saved her life, we both ended up unconscious in a fast-flowing river for a while, Aftran saved _my_ life…

Never mind, it's complicated.

The point is, we had to survive together in the middle of nowhere for a day or two. Aftran didn't want to kill me because she kind of needed my experience and morphing ability to survive out there, and although I kind of _had_ to kill Aftran because she knew too much, the only way in which I could've done that was to kill Karen… Well, would _you_ be able to kill an innocent young girl?

So Aftran and I had a lot of time to get to know each other. It changed both of us.

I learned that humans and Yeerks aren't actually all that different. Yeerks taking hosts is kind of like people eating meat. Neither is necessary for our survival, and both cause suffering for other lifeforms. We just tell ourselves that it doesn't matter because those lifeforms are somehow less important than we are. It's all just a matter of perspective.

At the same time, Aftran learned that humans are more than just mindless shells. That we're capable of seeing the big picture and sympathizing with them. Because of that, she told me she'd become the Yeerk equivalent of a vegetarian and let Karen go free. But in return, I'd have to prove to her that I'd be willing to give up the same things she'd have to give up.

Seems only fair, right? So I morphed into a caterpillar.

Morphing is that neat ability that I talked about before, the one Elfangor gave us. It allows us to "acquire" any number of animals by touching them, and then change into them whenever we want. But only for two hours at a time. If you stay in morph longer than that, you lose the ability to change back ever again.

So that's what I did. Aftran waited out the two hours, and I didn't morph back.

What neither of us knew at the time, though, is that the natural morphing of a caterpillar to a butterfly resets the morphing clock. So I could morph back a couple days later.

I saw Karen at the mall a few days after I morphed back. She told me that Aftran had not only upheld her end of the deal and freed her, but that she had tried to get me to demorph just before the time limit. She didn't actually want me to get stuck, she just wanted to test me. But caterpillars are deaf, so I couldn't hear her.

Of course, not all Yeerks are as sympathetic as Aftran. It's just that they aren't pure evil, either.

Unfortunately there are exceptions to that as well. Such as Visser Three.

He's the Yeerk who's currently in charge of the Earth invasion. He's also the only Yeerk who's ever been able to take an Andalite host, and therefore the only one who can morph. That makes him our most dangerous enemy by far.

We got introduced just a few minutes after we met Elfangor. He touched down in his Blade ship along with two Bug fighters, all three ships filled to the brim with Controllers.

We were forced to watch helplessly as Visser Three morphed into one of his huge, terrifying alien morphs and _ate_ Elfangor alive. Just because he could.

So, while I can sympathize with most Yeerks despite them being my enemy, I cannot sympathize with Visser Three.

In the months that followed, my friends and I met a bunch of other aliens.

First of all, there's Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill, or Ax, as we call him. He's Elfangor's younger brother. Ax came to Earth along with him, but he wasn't old enough to fight, so the Yeerks never even knew he was there. We found him in the crashed Andalite Dome Ship and helped him hide. In return, he declared Jake to be his "prince," which is sort of their word for leader, and he's been fighting the Yeerks with us ever since.

We also found out that one of Marco's friends, Erek, is actually an alien android, a Chee, pretending to be a human using some highly advanced hologram technology. The Chee were built by the Pemalites, a pacifist alien race that somewhat resembled dogs. They were designed to be their friends, programmed to protect life and to entertain.

Unfortunately, they can never kill, which is why they weren't much help to the Pemalites when some other alien race came to annihilate them for whatever reason. Some Pemalites and Chee managed to flee to Earth, but the Pemalites died, leaving only a couple Chee behind.

The Chee are our allies. They resist the Yeerks because the Yeerks would exterminate most of Earth's life when they finish enslaving humanity. They can't fight them directly like we do because of their programming, but they can spy on them, and Erek helps us with his hologram tech sometimes.

And then there's the Hork-Bajir and the Taxxons. Aside from humans, they seem to be the Yeerks' preferred hosts.

Hork-Bajir are primarily used as soldiers. They have naturally armored bodies with blades protruding everywhere. They have inverted knees, feet like a tyrannosaurus, and a long neck, like a snake's.

When they're not Controllers, they're actually pretty harmless. I know because I helped free two of them. Their blades only evolved to help them strip bark from trees, which was their primary food source on their homeworld. But it's very rare to come across a free Hork-Bajir nowadays.

The Taxxons, on the other hand, don't need to be freed. They're voluntary hosts. I don't know why, exactly. I just know that they look like giant centipedes, have an extremely good sense of smell, make a hissing sound to communicate, and eat anything and everything they can get a hold of. Including other Taxxons, if they get the chance.

As time went on, we learned to use our morphing abilities to fight the Yeerks. Sure, a couple teens and a young Andalite in animal morphs versus an alien armada isn't exactly fair, but we manage to do some damage from time to time.

Our only defense against them is secrecy. If the Yeerks would find out that we're just a couple of teenagers instead of the Andalite guerilla warriors they think we are, we're not going to last very long. That means we can't tell anyone. Anyone who _does_ find out needs to be protected from the Yeerks or… contained somehow, because if the Yeerks would get to them it'd all be over.

The Yeerks also have to keep themselves secret, though. They may be more technologically advanced than humans, but I think there are only about ten thousand Yeerks on or near Earth, and there are six billion humans. If humanity as a whole figures out what's going on, they wouldn't stand a chance. Or things would at least be a lot harder for them.

Their other major weakness is that every Yeerk has to swim around in what's known as a Yeerk pool at least once every three days. It's their equivalent of eating. If they don't, they die a slow, painful death.

The Yeerks built such a Yeerk pool underneath the city, in a large cave that they hollowed out over the years. There are several secret entrances leading into it, to let Controllers go to the pool without anyone noticing.

While a Yeerk is in the pool, its host is in control of its body again. Therefore, it has to be restrained and imprisoned by other Controllers until the Yeerk is ready to return. The Yeerks have gotten pretty good at that, but still, sometimes a host manages to make a run for it.

Which brings me to the real reason why everyone thinks Rachel and Jordan are dead.

One and a half weeks ago, Rachel and I ran into an escaping Hork-Bajir at the mall. Since Hork-Bajir don't exactly blend into a crowd, the Yeerks not only had to recapture him, but also had to infest everyone who saw him, to keep their existence a secret.

We managed to escape from the mall by pretending to be Controllers, but in doing so we kind of drew attention to ourselves. Worse, when Rachel, Jake, and Marco tried to stop the Yeerks from enslaving everyone at the mall half an hour later, the Yeerks stunned and captured Rachel while she was in human form. Jake and Marco managed to pull her out before she could be infested, but Visser Three and a large number of other Controllers had already seen her by then.

Even worse, Rachel's mom and her youngest sister Sarah had been at the mall, and we'd been too late for them. Even though they hadn't seen Rachel at the mall in person, they suspected her based on her description. They also wrongly figured that it had been Jordan who was with her instead of me. So Rachel and Jordan were in big trouble. They had to run away.

That didn't work out so well. Rachel had been a bit careless in her attempt to escape quietly, so their mom heard them and went after them. While they were fleeing on their bicycles, she just ran them over with her car.

Rachel somehow didn't get hurt too badly, and managed to get into the car and drive away with Jordan while Tobias was distracting her mom. But Jordan was hurt bad enough that she was slowly dying. I'm not even sure whether the hospital would have been able to save her, even if it hadn't been crawling with Yeerks.

The only thing Rachel could do was give her the power to morph. Fortunately, we'd recently recovered the Andalite device that Elfangor had used to give us our abilities.

See, when you morph back and forth, your whole body gets reconstructed from your DNA. So as long as you're still conscious enough to finish morphing, it will heal any and all of your wounds.

Of course, driving off in her mom's car didn't stop the Yeerks from looking for them. There was no way they'd _ever_ stop. So we had to stage their deaths.

Faking Jordan's death was easy. Rachel had made it look like she'd died from blood loss in the car, and that her body was then taken by a grizzly bear. In reality, Jordan was still alive when she was taken, and the grizzly bear was actually Rachel in morph.

Rachel's death had been a bit more complicated. We got some help with that from Erek. He projected a completely lifelike image of Rachel, controlled by Rachel herself. She let her projection get captured by her mom, who then took her to Visser Three. She'd pretended to have gone completely insane from watching Jordan die, so they had no reason to suspect that Jordan wasn't actually dead. Finally, with all of them still watching, the rest of us marched up in battle morphs and killed the projection, making it look like the Yeerks were right about Rachel knowing something, but that she was still only some unimportant human who got in the way.

We had to make it look completely real. Otherwise it wouldn't have worked. So I ended up having to watch my best friend get trampled to death by Jake's rhinoceros morph, kicking and screaming until he finally managed to step on her head. Now, whenever someone mentions Rachel's supposed death, I get to relive that moment in my mind.

Dad put his arm on my back and stroked me. I'd been staring at the ground in front of Rachel's grave, but looked up at him with tears in my eyes as he broke my trance. He was also silently crying. I hugged him.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

* * *

When we got home, Dad and I first went to our barn to check up on the animals.

My parents are both vets. Mom works in the zoo areas of The Gardens, a sort of theme park/zoo hybrid on the other side of the city. Dad and I work here at home, in our barn, which doubles as the Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic. We take in wounded animals from the national forest and try to nurse them back to health.

It's a charity thing. We're currently being funded by Karen's dad, who happens to be the billionaire owner of UniBank. Karen had apparently been nagging him about it after Aftran and I freed her. I love working with animals, so I kind of have a lot to thank them for.

Dad didn't bring up Rachel again while we were making our rounds. I could tell he wanted to say something to make me feel better, but I guess he didn't know what.

Good. Not only because it would remind me of Rachel again, but talking about Rachel with my parents now automatically means lying to them. And I hate having to do that all the time.

Mom came into the barn just before we were done. "Dinner's ready," she said.

Dad looked at his watch. "Oh, sorry, I guess I lost track of time."

Mom leaned against the open barn door with her arms crossed and looked at us while we finished up. Though I don't mean to say that she was angry, or even annoyed. I think she was just happy that, despite all that had happened, we were both still here.

But she _did_ look worried. Worried about me, I'm sure.

My parents talked over dinner, but I didn't say much. I was still off in my own world, thinking about Rachel and what our life had become. I've become more and more quiet around my parents in general ever since I became an Animorph, but it's been especially bad since we staged Rachel's death.

It's not that I didn't _want_ to talk to them about it. I used to tell them everything.

But if they'd ever find out that I'd been risking my life every other week or so trying to save the planet… I figured they'd have a heart attack or something. More importantly, I figured they wouldn't be very good at keeping the whole thing a secret from everybody else. They'd probably go to the police, or at least take me to a therapist or something. Also, as much as I don't want to even consider it, they could be infested at random when we're not watching.

"Cassie, you've barely touched your food," Mom said after a while. I looked up to find that they'd almost finished eating already.

"I'm not really hungry," I said absently.

My parents looked at each other. Then Dad sighed and nodded to Mom.

"Cassie, your dad and I are worried that you're hiding something from us," she said.

Oh no. Here we go.

"We understand that losing your best friend is hard to cope with, but that's exactly why we want you to open up about it," Dad added. "It's not healthy to bottle it up like this."

I looked down at my plate again. What do I do now?

"We promise we won't be angry, whatever you're hiding…" Mom tried. "Just talk to us."

"I can't," I heard myself think out loud.

Uh oh! Wrong answer!

"I-I have homework to do!" I quickly added, jumped up, and ran for the stairs, slamming the living room door behind me before they could object.

I curled up on my bed when I got to my room, angry at myself. That was so stupid!

I'm a terrible liar when I don't have time to think things through. And my true emotions always shine through, too. How was I going to explain myself now?

I wished Jake was here. He's much better at this. He _has_ to be. His brother Tom's been a Controller since before we even became Animorphs. I'm sure he'd have been able to come up with an excuse.

I spent at least fifteen minutes trying to decide between going downstairs to the phone to call him over, which would risk another confrontation with my parents, or morphing osprey and going over to him myself, which would risk my parents finding out that I'm missing if they'd come to my room to talk to me.

Then I heard the doorbell.

That was odd. I didn't hear a car pull up. Maybe it was Jake, arriving in morph but demorphing before coming in? That'd be really amazing timing.

I got out of bed and had just reached the top of the stairs when I heard Mom open the door.

"Um… Can I… help you…?" she asked our visitor. She sounded worried.

"I, um…" a girl said. I didn't recognize her voice, but whoever she was, she seemed scared to death. "I-I was… I was shot…"

What?

"Huh?" Mom agreed.

"You run the clinic over there, right? I-I know you're not human doctors, but I don't know where else to go… Please help me…"

I walked down the stairs. They lead directly into the hallway, so the girl could see me come down. She was already looking at me when I could first see her. She looked terrified, like she wasn't sure about staying or making a run for it. Then she suddenly squeezed her eyes shut and turned her head away, but she didn't run.

She was about the same age I was. She seemed vaguely familiar, but I couldn't place her. Maybe from school?

She looked almost as bad as Jordan had when I first saw her the day after she got run over. Her raincoat and pants were damaged, and there was mud and grime all over her. There was a large, fresh gash along the right side of her face, leading almost all the way to her right eye, which was bruised and swollen. She was clutching her left shoulder. There was some blood on her hand, but not enough to seem life-threatening. I don't think Mom really believed her at first.

"Hey, it's okay," Mom said in her comforting-parent voice, squatting down in front of her. "What's your name?"

The girl slowly turned back to her. "Jessica," she said. She seemed to regret it a second later.

"Okay, Jessica, my name's Michelle. That's my daughter Cassie. Why don't you come in and tell us what happened? Hmm?"

She cautiously walked inside. I gestured for her to follow me into the living room while Mom closed the door behind her. She sat down on the couch.

Dad wasn't here anymore. I figured he was probably in the barn.

"Would you like something to drink?" I asked Jessica. It was kind of automatic, I didn't really know what else to say.

She turned to look at me to respond, but then looked away and closed her eyes again. Her expression turned from pained and scared to angry and desperate.

She looked completely out of it. Maybe she hit her head really hard when she got that cut? Mom and I looked at each other worriedly.

But there was something… reminiscent about how she was acting, too. It looked almost like she was thought-speaking to someone, or at least, that someone was distracting her with thought-speak that she was trying to block out.

But there are only so many beings on Earth who're capable of thought-speak. There's me and my friends; we can thought-speak whenever we're in morph. But I don't see why any of them would be talking to her without at least telling me what's going on.

The only other is Visser Three.

Could Jessica be a trap, somehow? To get me to reveal that I know too much? Or was I just being paranoid?

Jessica opened her eyes and looked back at me again, distrustingly now. "N-no, I'm fine," she said. At least a minute had passed since I'd asked her the question.

"Maybe we should take you home…" Mom said. "Where do –"

"I don't have a home," Jessica interrupted her.

"Oh, I'm… I'm sorry to hear that." She paused. "Is there someone who's looking out for you that we could take you to?"

Jessica shook her head, tears welling up in her eyes. "L-listen, you don't understand, my shoulder…"

"Okay, let me have a look," Mom said.

Jessica slowly let go of her shoulder. Her coat didn't have a hole in it, but as soon as she unzipped it we could tell that she wasn't just confused from the blow to her head. Her shirt was soaked with fresh blood.

Mom covered her mouth to try to hide her shock. "O-okay, it's okay, I've seen enough. Stop moving; you might make it worse. I'm going to call 911, okay?"

Turns out that wasn't okay.

"No!" Jessica yelled, and shot up. "No ambulance, no hospital, no police, please!" She grabbed her arm.

Mom shushed her. "It's going to be okay, calm down." She stroked her hair. "But that wound looks pretty serious."

"I know, but you're a vet, right? I-I'm not an animal, but I was hoping you would help me anyway…"

Mom hesitated. Then Dad walked in. He must have heard Jessica. "Is everything okay?" he asked. "Wait, who's –"

Mom ignored him for the moment and sighed. "Jessica, why don't you sit back down and try to relax. Press down on your wound again like you were doing when you got here… Yeah, that's good. I promise I won't call anyone without asking you first, okay?"

Jessica obeyed. But she flinched and turned away in that weird way again when Mom said that last part.

Then Mom turned to me. "Cassie, get her to drink some water, and get a towel to soak up the worst of the blood."

I nodded, and headed for the kitchen.

Behind me, I heard Mom address Jessica again. "My husband and I are going to prepare our operating room for you. We'll come get you when we're ready, okay? Just relax and sit still until then."

Jessica didn't respond before I heard my parents walk away into the hall toward the operating room. It's not much – just a smallish room that was probably originally intended to be a washroom. There's a table in there that we keep sterile to operate on, and we keep all of our surgical tools and medical supplies in the cupboards there. Not exactly up to standard for operating on humans, but good enough for an emergency like this.

Could this be a Yeerk thing, I kept wondering, or was she really just some poor homeless girl? For some reason it didn't sit right with me. There was something about her… I couldn't tell what it was. Just a gut feeling, telling me that she was lying about something.

I pushed the thoughts aside. I was just being paranoid. Not everything is about the Yeerks.

I returned to Jessica with a glass of water and an old, but clean towel. I'd made one half of it wet with warm water, wanting to at least clean up that head wound of hers. I sat down on the couch next to her.

She still had her eyes squeezed shut and mostly ignored me. No, this wasn't Visser Three thought-speaking to her or anything sinister like that. It looked more like she was having some kind of vision or flashback or something.

I put the glass down on the table in front of us, and then put my hand on her good shoulder comfortingly. She looked up at me quickly, wide-eyed. I don't think she'd even noticed me sitting down next to her. She pulled away from me, like she was scared of me.

I let go of her shoulder again. "You should really drink something," I tried instead. I picked up the glass for her, so she wouldn't have to bend forward to reach for it. "Here."

She looked at me suspiciously, like I was trying to poison her. What was her problem?

"It's just water, look." I took a sip to prove it. "Listen, I don't want to worry you, because I'm sure you'll be okay, but you did lose a lot of blood. You need to drink."

She finally, slowly, took the glass from me and drank some of it.

"Will you let me clean up your head wound a little?" I asked. "I don't really dare touch your bullet wound, but that gash I can deal with."

She nodded. But before I even reached her, she seemed to wince in pain and squeezed her eyes shut again.

"A-are you okay?" I asked. She didn't respond, but she also didn't resist when I started cleaning her head wound.

"How did you get shot?" I asked after a while to break the silence.

"I… A police officer shot me."

"Why? What happened?"

"He…" she started, but paused. She squeezed her eyes shut again, but now it just seemed like she was trying not to cry. "I-I was just searching through an alley looking for food, when… h-he came out of nowhere and hit me in the head with something. I think… I-I think I got knocked out. W-when I came to, he'd taken my coat off, pulled up my shirt, a-and…"

I fought back a wave of anger and disgust. "I-it's okay, I get it," I interrupted her. I didn't want to hear the rest of it.

I thought back to the weekend after we found out about the Yeerks. I'd made myself look suspicious to the Yeerks by trying to listen in on the Controllers-only meeting of a meetup of The Sharing, a front organization for the Yeerks. Jake was there already, morphed into his dog, and I was worried about him. It was on the beach, and the only morph I had at the time was a horse, which would have been massively out of place. So hanging out just outside the meeting as myself would have been less suspicious, right?

Wrong. The day after, a police officer came to my house and forcibly took me straight to the Yeerk pool. My friends saved me just in the nick of time.

I wasn't sure what would be worse. Getting dragged to a Yeerk pool to be a slave for the rest of my life, or what I figured had happened or was about to happen to Jessica.

They were both too horrible to even think about.

"I-I'm so sorry," I added weakly.

She didn't say anything in response, but for a moment she looked at me… weirdly. I couldn't quite place it. It was sort of a mix of worry, relief, pain, anger, and… interest? It was almost like she was analyzing my response. Whatever it was, after what she just told me, it was really weird.

I wanted to dismiss it. Who was I to judge this girl for her behavior after what had just happened to her?

Or at least… what she _said_ had happened to her?

Mom entered the room again. She had already rolled up her sleeves and was wearing latex gloves. "We're ready for you," she told Jessica.

"Can I help?" I asked.

"I think it's best if your dad and I handle this…"

"Well, can I watch?" I hated myself for it, but I just didn't quite trust Jessica. Especially after that face she just made at me. So I wanted to keep an eye on her. "I-I mean, to learn," I added, as if that wouldn't have been Mom's first thought.

She frowned at me.

"She can watch, if she wants…" Jessica said.

But why would she –

"Well, alright," Mom sighed.

Right, of course. She _would_ say that if she wanted to keep an eye on me as well.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

* * *

My parents began by giving Jessica a ketamine shot. It's a sedative. I've only ever seen it used on animals, of course, but apparently it's sometimes used on humans as well. After the shot, they helped her lie down on the table, and she quickly started to relax.

Ketamine doesn't really knock you out cold. It's more like you don't really know what's going on anymore, like a really strong daydream. At least that's what my parents told me. After a minute or two, Jessica was sort of just blankly staring at me.

As soon as my parents were sure that she wouldn't feel anything anymore, they cut her coat open around the wound. They didn't want to risk worsening the wound by sliding it off. And it was a good thing they didn't. Jessica had apparently torn her shirt sleeve out of the way to get to the wound earlier, so there was nothing between her wound and the lining of her coat. I cringed as I saw a small bit of skin get torn from her shoulder along with the lining.

I moved closer to get a better look at the wound as my parents started to clean it with saline. It wasn't the worst bullet wound I've ever seen by far, and I see them on wounded animals all the time. But it wasn't great either. The bullet had grazed the side of her shoulder; it sort of took a bite out of it, about half an inch deep. So the good news was that it hadn't hit anything vital. Just skin, fat, and a small amount of muscle tissue. But the bad news was that it'd be hard to seal back up. That means it might get infected.

I noticed that Jessica was still looking at me. She'd even moved her head partway to track me. That was weird… From what I know from all the times I'd seen it used on animals, ketamine inhibits everything except reflexes. She didn't seem like she was in pain though, so I figured it wasn't worth distracting my parents for.

After cleaning the wound, Dad, having the most experience with bullet wounds, stitched it up as best he could. When he finished, he cleaned the wound again, and applied pressure with gauze until the bleeding stopped. Then I helped my parents take off Jessica's coat completely and pull the parts of her shirt that were still in the way aside, so they could dress and bandage the wound.

Finally, they properly cleaned up and bandaged her head wound as well. That was a lot easier.

The whole procedure took maybe twenty minutes. It'd probably take her at least that long to wake up again.

"So, what do we do now?" Dad asked.

"We have to call the police," Mom responded.

"No," I said determinedly. They looked at me, waiting for an explanation. It took me some effort to find a way to say it. "She told me… O-or well, she started to tell me, I don't know how bad it got… but…" I got really angry even thinking about it and looked away. "She told me that a police officer knocked her out while she was just minding her own business, and when she came to he was…"

I couldn't bring myself to finish, but I think they got the general idea. They were silent for a while.

Dad spoke first. "We'll let her spend the night here, so she can shower and get a safe night's rest to sleep the ketamine off. Then we'll ask her what she wants tomorrow morning."

Mom looked worried, but eventually nodded. "Okay. But we could get in trouble for this. If this girl is not who she says she is, and the police are looking for her…"

"We'll just have to take that risk, at least for tonight."

My parents left the room before Jessica woke back up. Dad went back to the barn, and Mom went upstairs to prepare our guest room. I stayed behind for when she'd wake up.

Thankfully this whole ordeal seemed to have distracted my parents from my accidental confession before, so I'd have time to come up with an excuse. I figured waiting for Jessica to wake up would be a great time to do that, so I let my mind drift off.

I couldn't think of anything good, though. I'd messed up pretty badly. I'd have to just play dumb and hope they'd forget about it eventually.

After a while, I caught movement from the corner of my eye. Jessica was starting to wake up. She'd tensed up and was sweating, like she was having a nightmare. I walked over to her and stroked her head. I could relate all too well with having nightmares.

Then she opened her eyes suddenly and looked at me. Her face turned to an almost disgusted kind of angry.

She looked so mean that she scared me, so I pulled my hand away and took a step back. "Hey, it's okay…"

She tried to get up. And I think she tried to say something, but her mouth was too numb to work right.

"Shhh, calm down, you're still paralyzed and confused from the sedative."

She didn't listen. I had to hold her down to keep her from falling off the table, and eventually had to call for help. "Mom, she's waking up!"

But just then, she stopped struggling entirely. Her face turned scared again, and she looked around frantically instead of trying to stare me down.

"You're okay, calm down," I repeated.

Mom walked in a moment later and looked at us.

"I think she was hallucinating," I reported. "I had to hold her down to keep her from falling, but she's calmed down now."

"Has she said anything yet?"

"No. Or, well, she tried to."

Jessica slowly moved her right hand over to her bandaged shoulder. She cringed slightly when she touched it. She also tried to look at it, but couldn't quite lift up her head far enough yet.

"My parents bandaged it up," I told her. She slowly turned her head to me again in response. "You'll be fine. Right, Mom?"

"Yeah," she confirmed. "How are you feeling?"

"Sahed," she tried.

"Scared?" Mom interpreted. "You're safe. You can't move right because you're still partly sedated. Try to relax, it'll wear off."

It took another couple of minutes of reassuring her before she started to form coherent sentences again. She started out with things like "Where am I?" and "How did I get here?" Apparently ketamine does that sort of thing when it wears off. Like when you jolt awake in the middle of a very realistic dream, but stronger. I guess that's why they don't normally use this stuff in hospitals unless there's no other way.

When she looked capable enough to walk again, Mom guided her to the bathroom to help her clean herself up. I stayed behind to clean and disinfect the table.

Seeing and cleaning blood never really bothered me. In fact, cleaning the operating table was one of my usual chores. But it was _human_ blood now, so I couldn't help but think of Rachel's trampled and crushed body lying in the park grass again. I felt a little sick.

When I was done, I went to the barn to see what Dad was doing. Apparently the wing of the eagle that we'd been caring for had gotten infected. Normally Dad would have taken care of it in the operating room, but Jessica kind of had priority, so instead he'd dumped an entire bucket's worth of disinfectant over a picnic table and was treating the eagle in the barn. He was almost done, so there wasn't much of a point in moving now, but I helped him finish and clean up.

Jessica and Mom had just come downstairs when Dad and I went back to the house. Mom was in the kitchen, preparing something to eat for Jessica. Jessica was sitting on the couch again, wearing some of my clothes now. She was staring out in front of herself while massaging her shoulder wound. Physically, she looked a lot better than she had when she appeared on our doorstep an hour earlier, but emotionally not much had changed.

I sat next to her. "You okay?" I asked, but I couldn't even finish saying those two words before she did her weird flinch again. She was balling her fists as well, now. "What're you doing that for?"

"It's –" she started saying angrily, but she composed herself and continued normally. "It's nothing."

"So why didn't you want to go to the hospital?" Dad asked her, more because he was trying to make conversation than to question her. I think.

"Because…" she started again, but then looked away guiltily. "I-I don't really want to talk about it… b-but… thanks for helping me and letting me stay the night." The last part sounded sincere.

"You're welcome," Dad responded.

"S-so… You take in wounded animals?"

Jessica didn't seem to want to open up to us about herself, so we mostly talked about the clinic and Mom's job at The Gardens.

She flinched a couple more times during the conversation. It was kind of random. Half the time she legitimately seemed to have been listening to what we were saying, and had to ask us to repeat what we said when she snapped out of it again.

I think my parents figured it was some kind of flashback thing, but it still didn't sit well with me. My mind was still trying to involve the Yeerks.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

* * *

I couldn't sleep. Every time I dozed off I woke up almost immediately again from hellish nightmares that didn't make any sense, most involving lots of blood and death.

I'm used to nightmares, but it was pretty bad that night.

After about an hour I gave up, turned on the light on my nightstand, and sleepily fished through the mess underneath my bed for a book I'd picked up from the library a couple days ago. _Dealing with Emotional Trauma_. I'd figured it might help me, and after what happened with Rachel, I could explain to my parents why I had it if they'd find it.

I woke up to a noise some time later. My nightstand light was still on and my right hand was resting on my book, which lay open right beside me. I didn't remember falling asleep, but I must've had.

Another noise. Someone was walking down the stairs, very slowly and irregularly.

I turned over to look at the time on my alarm clock. 1:28 AM. I sat up straight and rubbed my eyes, trying to make sense of it.

Was it Jessica? What was she doing? And more importantly, was it Yeerk-related?

I silently got out of bed, turned off my light to not be seen, opened my bedroom door, and focused my senses. I couldn't see much though. My eyes were still adjusted to the light of my nightstand, and the light in the hall was off.

Then I heard the click of the phone getting picked up, and then, softly, numbers getting dialed. Dialing the phone in the middle of the night? In the dark?

I tiptoed over to the stairs and flicked on the light. It's linked with the light in the hall downstairs, which is where the phone is. So I could see Jessica immediately.

The light startled her. She stumbled backwards, threw the handset out of her hand like it was suddenly on fire, and then scrambled to put it back on the hook to cancel the call. Then she looked around frantically until her gaze caught me. She stared at me wide-eyed for a moment, then let herself slide down along the opposing wall, and covered her face.

I had no idea what I just witnessed, but it didn't seem dangerous. So going downstairs to comfort her seemed like the right thing to do.

"It's okay…"

"N-no, it's not," she responded shakily. Then she did her flinch thing again for a second.

I took her to the living room and sat her down on the couch. I sat next to her.

"Who were you calling?" I asked after a couple seconds of silence.

"Y-you'll never believe me…"

"Try me."

She hesitated for a moment and flinched for a couple seconds before starting to speak. "You were friends with Rachel, right?"

Huh? What's Rachel got to do with this? How does she even know her?

"H-how do you…?"

"I… I kind of lied when I told you and your parents that I'm homeless… Or well, I guess I am, now… but… I went to the same school as you."

There'd been a school-wide assembly to inform everyone that Rachel passed away. They'd named me and Jake and shown photos, so I guess that would explain why she recognized me but I didn't recognize her.

"But what does that have to do with who you were calling?"

She ignored my question. "Do you believe that Rachel was involved with drug deals?"

"It… It doesn't matter what I believe," I said, trying to stay vague.

Jessica was silent for a moment, staring dead ahead.

"I watched her die…" she finally said, then paused again.

I wanted to say something helpful, but I was too confused and sleepy to come up with anything.

"It happened in the park near school," she continued, "in the evening, during this meetup thing of The Sharing. You're not going to believe this, but she was… trampled. By a _rhino_. I wouldn't even have believed my own memories if I hadn't also been taking pictures. And my friend Kim was there too."

The Yeerks had covered up the incident with a weak story about a gas leak that was causing hallucinations, unrelated to Rachel's death. They wouldn't have liked those pictures getting out.

"Before that, I watched a woman literally drag her to the park. Rachel had already been hurt somehow, because there was blood all over her, and she was screaming things about aliens doing things to her. At the time I thought she'd just gone crazy…" She shook her head and sighed. "Kim and I got the photos developed a couple days after it happened, but at first we weren't sure what to do with them. Eventually we decided to send them to this anonymous tip address for the police. Then, today, my dad…"

She stopped talking for a moment and closed her eyes, squeezing tears away.

"He's a police officer. He found out that The Sharing was bad news a while ago, because he found a link between it and a crazy large amount of missing person cases… But only a day after he started investigating, he told me to forget about it. I didn't, though. There was something weird about the way he'd said it…"

She covered her face and sobbed. I put my arm around her.

So she _was_ hiding from the Yeerks, after all. And her own father was a Controller. She had no idea what she was getting herself into…

"So… what happened today?" I asked about a minute later.

"Dad…" she started. "N-no, the alien inside him… commanded him to pull his gun on me and Kim when I got home. This stupid wound had only been a warning shot. Then he took us to this… this horrible underground place…"

She paused again.

He took them to the Yeerk pool? Then how in the world did she escape? Did Aftran have something to do with this? I was starting to panic, now.

"And then what?" I urged her to continue.

She clutched her head and flinched like she had before, but this time she kept talking. "They stuck this thing inside my head and I want it out so badly! It keeps mocking me and hurting me and giving me these visions and just now I think it managed to get me to the phone while I was asleep!"

I was so completely dumbfounded that it numbed my panic. A Yeerk that couldn't control its host?

She composed herself again. "But even then I think I was lucky… Th-they normally have complete control over people, like my dad, and now Kim, probably…" She suddenly looked up at me. "Do you believe me?"

I stared back at her. What do I say to that? I couldn't just tell a Controller that I know about the Yeerks! But she was only partly Controller somehow, so… what?

"I don't know what to believe…" I eventually said.

She shook her head and covered her face again. "W-well, at least you're not –" She flinched again, but this time she completely lost it. "SHUT _UP!_ GO AWAY!" she yelled at the Yeerk inside her.

I've seen Yeerks fight for control before. Once it happened to a teacher of mine, right in the middle of class. The Yeerk was starving, because we'd messed up the Yeerk pool a week or so before then, and something had gone wrong with transporting Controllers back and forth to the Yeerk pool on the mothership. It looked exactly like this. But it normally only lasts a couple seconds. Then the Yeerk either takes control again or leaves the host.

…or leaves the host!

I jerked away from Jessica instantly. If the Yeerk couldn't control Jessica, it might want to leave her and go to me instead! It could just have been waiting for the right moment!

Then I heard feet shuffling around upstairs. Jessica's scream had woken up my parents! I knew to stay away from her now, but they didn't, and how in the world would I explain that? Like, without telling them everything?

"Please calm down…" I tried. I wasn't sure who I was trying to calm down the most, though.

Footsteps coming down the stairs!

Flashbacks? I'd never had them this strong, but I vaguely remembered reading in my book that it happens sometimes. Or just nightmares? Sleepwalking?

None of those things would keep my parents away from her, but I had to say _something_. Otherwise Jessica might tell them the truth.

Dad opened the living room door drowsily and annoyed. He's always grumpy when he wakes up until he drinks at least a gallon of coffee, and it being almost two in the morning didn't help.

"What are you kids doing up in the middle of the night?" he asked, more annoyed than worried. I wasn't sure he even remembered Jessica's screams, or if they just slowly woke him up.

"Jessica, uhm… Sh-she was sleepwalking and having a nightmare. I'll handle it, I couldn't sleep anyway…"

He groaned and turned around. "Just be quiet," he said, and headed back upstairs.

I sighed. That was easy. I didn't even have to lie, and knowing my dad, he'll have forgotten all about it in the morning.

But it was only a fraction of the problem. There was a Yeerk that was probably looking for a new host lurking around in my house!


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

* * *

Think, Cassie, think. How can you keep yourself and your parents safe, while also not telling anyone what's actually going on?

I turned to Jessica again. She was crying, holding her head in her hands. I don't think she'd realized how panicked I was, at least not yet.

I wished so badly that my friends were here. I'm the worst of them at making quick decisions about how to handle these kinds of things. And how I choose to handle this could mean the difference between life, death, or enslavement for Jessica, my parents, my friends, me…

Stop. Don't think about _that_ …

It's a good thing Yeerks are slow. As long as Jessica and I would pay attention, there's no way the Yeerk would escape Jessica alive. Not to mention crawl all the way along my body to get to _my_ ear. That's probably why it hadn't tried yet. It must have long realized it'd be suicide.

My gut instinct was to take Jessica to my friends, and to all decide together what to do. But that'd be way too risky. Right now, assuming the Yeerk doesn't find a way to switch hosts, the worst thing that could happen would be Jessica losing control long enough for the Yeerk to call for help. In that case, my parents and I may or may not become targets for infestation. Which would of course be bad, but we might still be able to get out of that situation alive and free with Erek's help, like Rachel and Jordan had. But if I'd tell Jessica who I really am, who my friends are, where we have meetings…

No, I couldn't tell her everything.

But I also refused to tell her nothing. She needed someone to talk to who understood what was going on. I figured she didn't even know about the three-day time limit for the Yeerk. The Yeerk certainly wouldn't have told her willingly.

But how could I explain knowing that in a way that wouldn't endanger my friends or family?

Rachel, maybe?

Jessica and the Yeerks already knew that I was a friend of Rachel's, and they knew that Rachel knew about them on the day she supposedly died. But they didn't know what Rachel had been doing during that day. It wouldn't be a stretch to think that she'd have tried to talk to her best friend about what happened, right? And with how crazily her projection had been rambling, and the whole drug thing in the back of my mind, I probably wouldn't have believed her at the time.

I moved a little closer to Jessica again and put my hand on her good shoulder. "I… Okay, I believe you," I said quietly, not wanting to wake up my parents again or have them overhear if they were still awake.

She slowly looked back up at me. "Huh? Y-you do?" she whimpered.

"I never told anyone about this, but… the day Rachel died, she came by my house. It was like she'd gone crazy, talking about aliens taking control of people and killing her sister… I thought she was hallucinating or something, because of drugs maybe. When I tried to calm her down and said that I'd call 911, she ran away. I… I don't know why I never said anything… I guess I was scared. But hearing you say the same things now…"

I paused for a moment.

"One of the things she was rambling about was that the aliens need to leave their hosts every three days, or they starve."

She looked at me wide-eyed, a sparkle of hope welling up inside her. Then she sort of stared through me. I figured she was talking to the Yeerk.

"Th-then that's why my dad was in the cages with me…" she finally said, thinking out loud.

"Do you know why it can't control you properly?"

"I-I'm not sure. I don't think the Yeerk knows, either… I can't read its mind like it can read mine, but I can sense its feelings, and it was very scared and confused when it first found out that it couldn't control me. It's –" She stopped and flinched for a couple seconds again. "I-I was going to say it's scared now that I know about the three-day limit, but now it's mostly angry… I'm getting so sick of it distracting me and feeling its emotions all the time… I… I can't imagine what it's like for… for…"

She held her face in her hands again and sobbed.

I tried to think more about how to handle the situation. But I just couldn't, not with Jessica sitting next to me crying about friends and loved ones being under Yeerk control. So I just tried to comfort her as well as I could without getting too close.

"B-but I have to be strong," she eventually continued. "I-I could be the only one who's somehow immune to them. If I can find out why, I might be able to fight them… A-and save Kim and Dad."

I hadn't even thought of that yet. Being able to make people immune would be an insanely powerful weapon against the Yeerks. They'd have no reason to take human hosts anymore!

"Do you think your parents could help find out how it works?" she interrupted my train of thought.

"I… No, how would they?"

"W-well… I'm sure they're better at biology than I am…"

"They're vets, not brain surgeons… A-and… I'd rather not get them involved. I-I mean, Rachel got killed because of all this…"

Jessica looked pained, and hesitated for a moment. "I… The only other person I know who might be able to help is _my_ mom… She's a university chemistry professor and researcher, but she's at a conference in Japan right now and I don't even know if the Yeerks have gotten to her already because she's hardly ever home…"

"How did you know _we_ weren't Controllers?"

"Controllers?"

Again! I slipped up again! Think before you speak, Cassie!

Jessica may not know the word, but I'm sure the Yeerk inside her does. And I'm not supposed to know it. "Th-that's what Rachel called people with Yeerks in their heads…" I quickly added.

"Oh. W-well, I figured that if your parents were still running that clinic, they probably wouldn't be Controllers. I wouldn't have come here if I would've known they were _your_ parents, though… After what happened with Rachel, I was sure they'd have made _you_ one of them…"

"No kidding…" I responded bitterly. So that's why she was so suspicious of me.

The only reason the Yeerks didn't infest me was because they had no Yeerks to spare after the Hork-Bajir incident. They decided they didn't find me interesting enough after monitoring me for two hours to make sure that I wasn't an Andalite in morph, and interrogating me the human way.

We were quiet for a while, both staring at the floor.

"How am I going to stay awake for three days…?" Jessica eventually thought out loud.

"Huh?"

"W-well, if you hadn't woken me up when I was making that call…"

Right. I thought about that for a moment.

"The guest room door has a lock on it, right? I suppose I could lock you in your room, at least for tonight…"

She looked sad and scared, but didn't object.

"I'm… also worried about the Yeerk leaving you and taking me or one of my parents as host instead," I added. "So we should block off the gap under your door somehow…"

She nodded weakly.

We went back to bed soon after that. I locked Jessica in her room, then she blocked off the slit under the door by putting a table on its side against the door. We couldn't really block it from the outside without having a very good explanation ready for my parents, so it'd have to do.

But man, now I _really_ couldn't sleep.


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6**

* * *

I gave up trying to sleep after twenty minutes or so. I could think of so many ways for this to go wrong…

I mean, there was a Yeerk in my house! What if it managed to take control of Jessica long enough to move the table? Would the table even do anything at all? A Yeerk can squeeze between a person's brain and skull, surely it'd also be able to squeeze between the table and the door frame? And what about tomorrow? I'd have to go to school, leaving Jessica home alone with Dad?

I got out of bed and tiptoed downstairs to the phone in the dark. Just like Jessica, I guess. I dialed Jake's phone number.

It was risky. We always figured that the Yeerks would be monitoring phone calls somehow, and for all I knew Tom would pick up. But we'd worked out ways of contacting each other that shouldn't seem suspicious to any eavesdroppers. Especially after what happened to Rachel.

I had to wait for like a minute before Jake finally answered. I was about to give up.

"Yeah?" he asked sleepily and annoyed.

"J-Jake?" I whispered. "I-I just wanted to hear your voice…"

"Cassie?"

"I had this horrible nightmare where I watched you die…"

That was the code we'd come up with. We actually get nightmares like that so often nowadays that it doesn't even faze us anymore. But considering I'd supposedly just lost my best friend, such a phone call shouldn't seem out of place.

Jake was silent.

"I wish you were here…" I added, just in case he didn't get it.

"A-alright. Look, it's the middle of the night right now, we'll talk tomorrow at school, okay? See you soon." Then he hung up.

The 'see you soon' was part of the code as well. He was coming, despite the rest of what he said.

I went back to my room, opened my window far enough for Jake to enter as a bird just in case I'd fall asleep somehow, and then curled up on my bed again.

I heard Jake's voice in my head some twenty minutes later. ≺Cassie? Are you okay?≻ he thought-spoke. He sounded like he was worried sick.

I heard his falcon morph's talons grip the roof above me. Bird ears are much better than human ears, so he'd hear me just fine from there.

"I'm fine…" I whispered. "But I didn't know what else to do. There's a Controller in our guest room, sort of…"

≺Sort of?≻ Marco repeated. I guess Jake woke him up on his way here.

"She was infested earlier today, but the Yeerk can't control her for some reason. So she ran off after getting out of the Yeerk pool."

≺What do you mean it can't control her?≻ Jake asked.

"Well, she still has control over her body. Mostly. The Yeerk can talk to her, distract her, and hurt her I think, so she winces randomly whenever it does, but while she's awake the Yeerk can't do much more. I caught her trying to make a phone call while sleepwalking about an hour ago, though… That's when she confided in me and told me what happened."

≺Hang on. Who is she?≻ Marco asked nervously.

"Just some girl from school… Why?"

≺Do you know her?≻

"No…"

≺Why did she come here then?≻ He sounded so nervous and serious that he was starting to scare me. Marco is usually the joking type. The situation has to be really serious for him to be.

"She… Her dad shot her in the process of taking her to the Yeerk pool. The wound needed treatment. She knew about the Clinic somehow and figured it'd be a safer bet than the hospital."

≺Right…≻ he said. Not sarcastically, but not entirely convinced either.

≺What are you thinking?≻ Jake asked him.

≺Doesn't this whole thing feel like a trap to you? That Yeerk could just be pretending to not be in control to be Andalite bait. I mean, if the Andalites would find a way to make themselves and others immune against Yeerks, they'd win the war in no-time. And the Yeerks know Rachel was in contact with the "Andalite bandits," so they might have guessed that Cassie might be, too. For all we know there's a small army of cloaked Yeerk ships hovering around Cassie's home right now, waiting for us to show up, which is exactly what we did!≻

I felt sick to my stomach. I might have just led my friends right into a trap! How did I not think of that? I sat down on the side of my bed and stared. My mind was racing. I was panicking, but there was nothing I could do.

≺Marco, calm down,≻ Jake said. ≺ _If_ they're out there, they haven't attacked us yet. Which means that they don't know for sure yet if we're morphs or real animals, so we can still get out of this. Did you tell that Controller anything about who you are?≻

"N-not really…" I responded shakily. "I-I just told her that Rachel tried to talk to me about the Yeerks on the day she died, but I didn't believe her and was too scared to tell anyone about it. I really wanted to tell her about the three-day limit is why…"

≺Okay, let's roll with that then until we're sure this isn't a trap,≻ Jake said after thinking for a few seconds. ≺We pretend to be normal birds for a while, go to the forest, maybe remorph to something else a few times while we're there, then go back home and pretend like nothing happened. We'll probably be fine.≻

"No, wait, you don't understand…" I said hastily, trying to keep my voice down despite my panic. "If this _isn't_ a trap, that Yeerk will be looking for any opportunity to take another host. I'm scared to death of it taking control of me or one of my parents while we sleep, or tomorrow while I'm at school. And my parents might decide to call the cops at some point. They think that no one's looking for Jessica now because she said that she was homeless, but the Yeerks are going to report her missing eventually…"

Jake and Marco were silent for a while, thinking. Jake eventually broke the silence.

≺Here's what we can do. On our detour back home, we'll get Tobias, Rachel, Jordan, and Ax to keep an eye on that girl and your parents as covertly as possible. If your parents decide to call someone about what happened, they'll just have to pretend to be Andalites and explain what's going on using thought-speak. And we'll just have to hope that this girl freaks out if the Yeerk leaves her, so they have time to intervene. The three of us go to school like nothing weird is going on until we come up with a better plan.≻

It wasn't perfect, but it was definitely better than nothing. I nodded weakly, then realized they wouldn't be able to see that. "O-okay," I said.

≺Guess that's as good a plan as any for now, yeah,≻ Marco said. ≺What's this girl's name, by the way?≻

"Jessica."

≺Oh man. _The_ Jessica? The one who got in a fight with Rachel a couple months ago? Or the one who hangs out with that other girl, what's her name, uh… Kim?≻

"Um… The latter, I think…"

≺How do you know all those girls?≻ Jake scoffed.

≺Hey, you can't go talking to a girl without at _least_ knowing her name.≻

I couldn't help but chuckle at that.

≺What?≻ he asked. I wasn't sure if he was joking or not.

Marco's probably tried to chat up every girl in school at least once. He's not very good at it. He _is_ good at brightening up people's moods when things get rough, though, even if it's at his own expense.

≺Marco, if you go tell Tobias and the others to come here, I'll stick around here until they do. Okay?≻

≺Got it! See you at school tomorrow.≻

≺Cassie, I'm going to fly around a bit to not look so suspicious, so I might not hear you whisper. But I'll be around. Alright?≻

"Alright…" I sighed. As much as I wanted him to stay, that would have been way too dangerous.

≺Try to get some sleep. It'll be okay.≻

Yeah, that wasn't going to happen.


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7**

* * *

Footsteps!

I drowsily jolted up, my mind racing from the sleepiness combined with the sudden burst of adrenaline.

Jessica? Yeerk? Danger?

No, 6:03 AM. It was just my parents waking up.

I let myself fall back down on my bed and covered my face, wiping some of the cold sweat out of my eyebrows.

Finally, the night was over.

I had all kinds of visions and half-awake nightmares all night. I got infested at least a dozen times in various ways, sometimes while I was asleep, sometimes after being taken to the pool by my parents or Jessica. In some nightmares I was already a Controller, helpless as I ratted out my friends or got my parents infested. In a particularly realistic one of those the Yeerk even made me burn down the barn, with all the animals still locked in their cages, laughing at me all the while. And then there were a couple of nightmares that were inspired by Jessica's excuse for how she got the bullet wound.

I gave myself a couple minutes to calm down, then got dressed. My alarm wouldn't go off until six-thirty, but I was absolutely not interested in trying to get more sleep.

When I was done, I walked up to the window and looked outside. The weather had gotten worse since yesterday. There was quite a bit of wind now, with a drizzle between short bursts of heavy downpour. Just the right kind of weather for my mood.

≺Good morning,≻ Tobias thought-spoke to me.

I couldn't see where he was, but clearly he could see me. I forced a smile.

≺So, uh. Nothing weird happened throughout the night. No signs of any Yeerk activity aside from that girl. It looked and sounded like she had just as restless of a night as you had. Rachel and Jordan kept their eyes on you for the first couple of hours; they're asleep right now, so they can take over from me again later. Ax flew into your basement as a fly earlier and has been hiding there since, just in case the Yeerk tries to make a move and we need firepower quickly. You probably shouldn't go talking to him though; if the Yeerks are watching we don't want to give them any hints that he's there.≻

I smiled again, but warmly this time. They were really looking out for me. Rationally I knew they would, but, you know. When you're halfway into nightmare world, you don't really think rationally.

I waited for my parents to go downstairs before going to Jessica's room to wake her up and let her out.

I knocked on her door. "Jessica? You awake?"

I heard her move around when I said her name. "Yeah," she groaned a couple seconds later.

I unlocked the door and slowly pushed it open just far enough for me to go through, careful not to make too much noise pushing the table aside. She was sitting on the side of her bed already, drowsily massaging her shoulder, looking absolutely exhausted and miserable. I sat down near her.

"Did you sleep at all, after…?" I wasn't sure how to put it.

"The Yeerk kept me awake… I think it's trying to tire me as much as it can, so it has a better chance of taking control of me later…"

I didn't know what to say to that.

"So, what now?" she asked. "Your parents aren't going to let me stay here forever if you won't let me tell them what's going on…"

"Let's please just stick to your homeless story unless you absolutely don't have a choice. You seemed to have that worked out pretty well before you got here."

She sighed. "I feel terrible about that lie… Why are you so scared of telling them, anyway? Do you think they might be under Yeerk control?"

"N-no, it's just…"

I decided against finishing that sentence.

The main reason I didn't really want her or my friends to tell them that Yeerks exist, is because I was sure I would not be able to keep the rest of my secrets anymore then, either. And I just had no idea how they would react to finding out that I actively pick a fight with these creeps. But I couldn't tell Jessica any of that.

"Please just don't tell them, okay?" I added.

"Okay, fine," she reluctantly agreed.

I brought Jessica some clean clothes to wear. Then we went downstairs to join my parents for breakfast.

"Good morning," Mom said when we got downstairs.

We replied, and sat down at the table with her. Dad was there too, but he was still in his comatose need-more-coffee state, reading the newspaper.

"How're you feeling?" Mom asked Jessica.

"I didn't sleep much."

"After what you've been through, that doesn't really surprise me… But what about your shoulder?"

"Oh. Right. It still hurts, but at least it doesn't feel like it's on fire anymore."

"That's promising."

"I… Thank you again for helping me and letting me stay overnight."

"Don't worry about it. Why didn't you just go to the hospital, though? I'm sure they would have helped you there, too."

"I… I was scared."

I looked at Jessica nervously. Had she come up with an excuse for this? I couldn't tell from the face she was making.

"Why?" Mom asked.

"Because… I-I…" she said shakily. But she composed herself. "M-my mom died in a hospital."

"I'm sorry to hear that… But –"

"She was just there for a blood test or something, I don't remember exactly. Something simple. But they made a mistake, mixed her up with some other patient, and gave her something that made her really sick. She died a couple days later. Then they slammed Dad with a ridiculous medical bill to make sure we wouldn't have money for a lawyer to sue them. We lost our home, Dad lost his job, then about a year ago he got sick and died as well."

Dad put down his newspaper. Mom and Dad were both staring at Jessica now, shocked and heartbroken. They clearly believed her story.

Heck, _I_ almost believed it and I _knew_ she was lying. She should be an actress or something.

"And you've been living on the street by yourself all that time?" Dad asked.

Jessica shrugged as if it was nothing, and continued staring at her plate.

"Well, help yourself to some food, don't be shy," Mom said. "As much as you might like, though, we can't keep you here forever…"

"N-no, no, I know," Jessica stammered quickly.

"But we can hardly just throw you back out on the street either, can we? We'll have to call the police or CPS at –"

"No, please, I-I… I have bad experiences with both of those… I _choose_ to live on the street because at least that way I don't have people pretending to care about me when they really don't and just make my life an even bigger mess."

"But then… how can we help you?" Mom asked, disheartened.

"W-well, I could use a new raincoat…" Jessica said shyly. Then she squeezed her eyes shut and winced slightly. It was nowhere near as bad as it was the evening before, though. Either the Yeerk was weakening, or Jessica was getting used to it.

Not much else happened over breakfast. Mom left for work around six forty-five like she always does. Dad and I cleaned up afterward and then went to the barn to feed the animals. Jessica helped with that as well.

There was sort of an awkward silence almost the whole time, though. I could tell Dad was worried about something, but didn't want to talk about it. I wasn't sure if it was about Jessica or me.

Probably me, though. I'm sure he wouldn't have forgotten about my slip-up yesterday over dinner yet.

"Well, I guess I should get going to school," I said at some point.

"Huh? We have plenty of time," Dad responded.

"No, I figured I'd take the bus again today. So you can stay here with Jessica."

"Don't be silly, Jessica can just come along when I bring you, right?"

He looked between the two of us. We were both looking at each other worriedly. After all, someone at school might recognize her.

"I-I'd rather not go near the city-center for a while…" Jessica stammered. "A-and besides, I don't even have a coat to wear…"

Dad frowned. "You can just stay in the car, right?"

I didn't give him time to argue. "Look, it's fine. _I'll_ be fine. Bye Dad!" I said as I left the barn.

"Cass!" he managed to call after me before I left, but I didn't respond, and he didn't follow.


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8**

* * *

That day was one of _those_ days. You know, the ones where every little thing goes wrong.

First, I fell asleep on the bus on the way to school and missed my stop. There wouldn't be another bus in the opposite direction for forty-five minutes, so I had to walk for a good twenty minutes in the rain to not be _ridiculously_ late for class. Fortunately, I thought, first period is English, and Ms. Morris is usually pretty understanding. I'd just say I'd been having trouble sleeping since what happened to Rachel, and tell her the truth about missing my stop.

Except I also completely forgot about my homework.

I _was_ going to do that the evening before, but then Jessica happened. I couldn't tell _her_ that of course, and my sleep-deprived mind was _way_ too slow at coming up with a proper excuse, so I ended up looking like I had just been lazy about it. It wasn't even a lot of work, which made me look especially bad. So she made me come back during the lunch break to do it.

Second period was math. Something about linear equations, I think. Whatever it was, it was boring as heck. Boring enough to fall asleep to. Now, Mr. Taylor is _not_ one of the lax teachers. He called me out on it, I jolted up half-screaming from the nightmare I was having, everyone except Jake laughed at me, yada, yada, yada. Poof, and whatever would have been left of my lunch break was gone. Ugh.

The problem wasn't even that I had to work through lunch. The problem was that I wouldn't have time to talk to Jake or Marco in private until the end of the day.

The fact that they were in school at all meant that they didn't run into any problems flying home the night before, and I'd forced a smile at them when I arrived, so I'm sure they figured I was okay too. But I really wanted to figure out what to do next.

During the lunch break Vice Principal Chapman made an announcement over the PA system, asking anyone who'd seen Jessica recently to report to his office. Chapman is a Controller, and a high-ranking one at that. So either the whole thing wasn't a trap and the Yeerks were truly looking for Jessica, or this was part of the trap.

The rest of the day wasn't as eventful. I got called out a couple more times for dozing off, but it didn't net me any detention. I just had to stay after my last class for a couple minutes to explain myself to the teacher, but she was satisfied with my by then usual Rachel excuse.

Jake and Marco were waiting for me outside class.

"So either you didn't sleep much last night, or those linear equations bored you _so_ much that you're _still_ sleepy because of them," Marco joked.

I just groaned at him.

"What happened? Are you okay?" Jake asked.

I nodded. "Yeah, just a bad night." I would have been more specific, but there were way too many people around.

"Nightmares about Rachel?"

"Among other things…" I grumbled. I was in a pretty bad mood.

"How about I'll come around to your place around five? Then you can tell me all about it."

"Thanks," I said, not exactly happily. Class ends at three fifteen, so apparently they had to go home first or something.

He put his hand on my shoulder for comfort. "Hey, it'll be okay. We've had worse, right?"

I fought back a sudden urge to break down, hug him, and start crying. I really didn't want to do that in school, though. _Especially_ not with Marco standing next to us, of all people. I just stared blankly ahead of myself instead.

Erek walked up to us while we swapped out our schoolbooks and got our coats from our lockers. He made eye contact with me for a moment to get my attention, but then turned to Marco.

"Hey, Marco, I was thinking of going to the pool. Want to come with?"

"While that is an excellent idea, I think I'll have to pass."

"Suit yourself. I'll catch up with you later this evening then."

"Okay, later."

Erek walked away again. Clearly he'd meant that he'd go to the Yeerk pool. Maybe to try to figure out if this whole thing was a trap or not? At least, I figured he wasn't sure whether it was or not either, otherwise he or my other friends would have tried to mention it. But in any case, my friends must have told him what was going on over lunch, and he decided to help us.

Knowing that Erek would help made me feel a little better. He should be able to figure out if this whole thing is a trap or not, and if a high-tech android wouldn't be able to find out why Jessica is immune, I didn't know what would.

Unfortunately, being thirty seconds late for the bus back home, not being able to morph and fly home due to my backpack, clothes, and coat, and therefore having to stand around in the rain for half an hour put me right back into my terrible mood. I was soaking wet and miserable when I finally walked up our driveway an hour or so after school got out.

≺Nothing out of the ordinary happened here,≻ Rachel thought-spoke to me. She didn't show herself though.

≺Did Jake and Marco get home safely last night?≻ Tobias asked.

I forced a smile and nodded slightly in response.

≺Okay.≻

≺Does anyone have an actual plan yet? I'm so bored…≻ Jordan complained.

I shook my head.

I found Jessica staring at the TV when I got inside. Dad's truck was in the driveway, but he wasn't in the living room. Mom wasn't home yet.

"Hey," I said.

She jolted up as if I woke her. "O-oh, hey."

"Are you okay?"

She sighed. "I'm so tired… I spent the last hour or so just trying to stay awake, so I don't end up Yeerkwalking without you around…"

I wasn't sure what to say. I wanted to tell her my friends had been guarding her the whole time, but of course that would have been suicide if there were Controllers watching us.

"Two more days of this…" she groaned. "And my shoulder is killing me."

I sat down next to her and started staring at the TV as well. I still didn't know what to say, but I figured she might at least feel a little safer with me around.

The phone rang a couple minutes later. I almost freaked out when the man on the opposite end told me he was with the police. But it wasn't about Jessica.

He said that a fox had caused an accident on the highway. It had tried to cross during the usual traffic jam. Someone ran into it and slammed the brakes. The guy behind wasn't paying attention either and caused a fender bender, which is how the police got involved.

Anyway, he called because the fox was still alive. Most policemen know about the Clinic, so it's pretty common to get calls like this. I noted down the mile marker, thanked him for calling, and hung up.

"Who was that?" Jessica asked. She looked a little scared; I guess she saw my initial moment of panic.

"Some policeman about a wounded fox by the highway. Do you know where Dad is?"

"In the barn, I think."

"Okay, I'll be right back."

Jessica was right. I found Dad tending to the wounded eagle again.

"How's he doing?"

"The antibiotics seem to be working. He'll be alright. You're home late? I was starting to get worried."

"I just missed my bus, Dad. I'm fine. A policeman just called, there's a wounded fox by the highway through the forest near mile marker 28.5."

"Okay, got it," he said, and handed me the partly sedated eagle. "Can you prepare the operating room while I'm gone?"

"Sure."

I put the eagle back in his cage. Then I went to get Jessica, so we could ready the operating room together. I told her what we had to do: make sure that all the surgical tools are in place and sterilized, make sure the table is disinfected, and prepare a ketamine shot. She was mostly silent and seemed too tired to really help, but of course the point was just that I could keep an eye on her, and wake her should she fall asleep.

But it wasn't good enough. I had my back to Jessica and was preoccupied with cleaning a scalpel when it happened.

She threw her body against mine, and before I could react, I felt a sharp pain in my left ear.

I was being infested!


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter 9**

* * *

NO! Get out!

I pushed Jessica off of me and jumped back, losing my balance as I stumbled into the operating table, clawing at my ear maniacally even after I hit the floor. Fortunately I'd dropped the scalpel before freaking out.

≺Cassie? Are you alright?≻

I don't really remember whether I managed to scream or not. Ax might have just asked me if I was okay because he heard me fall. In any case, he didn't consider whatever he thought had happened to be important enough to reveal himself.

Jessica certainly wouldn't have screamed. The Yeerk had managed to get her to empty the ketamine shot that I'd prepared for the fox into her arm just before it left her and infested me. She already lay passed out on the floor next to me.

Within a second, my muscles had seemingly stopped responding to what I wanted them to do. It felt just like when Aftran infested me.

≺You were taken host before?≻ I heard a voice in my head say. It wasn't one of my friends.

I couldn't help but think about Aftran more.

≺Aftran nine-four-two! _Traitor!_ ≻ the Yeerk yelled in my head.

This would be different though. Aftran was sympathetic, and I could already tell that this Yeerk was not. It was absolutely disgusted by the idea of a Yeerk working together with its host.

It was also frustrated, scared, and desperate. If this whole thing _was_ a trap, this Yeerk wasn't aware of it. That calmed me down a little. There wouldn't be any help coming for it.

And my friends were out there. As soon as they'd realize what was going on, they'd get it out of me.

≺Your _friends?_ ≻ it mocked. ≺Your friend Rachel was killed by the very species that is trying to defend you humans, did you know that? They _crushed_ the life out of her!≻

* * *

" _Jess, RUN!" Kim suddenly yelled at me, grabbed my arm, and pulled me along with her. I looked behind us. Two elephants, two rhinos, and a freaking gorilla were headed right for us!_

" _I told you I wasn't hallucinating yesterday!" I screamed as we ran for cover by a couple nearby trees. When we got there, I immediately took out my camera again and started snapping pictures like a maniac._

 _Then we gasped as we heard the most horrific scream yet. I dropped my camera. Kim grabbed my hand and squeezed. I squeezed back._

 _One of the rhinos had run over the girl who that woman had dragged to the park. I'd watched it charge, but I didn't see the girl until it stepped on her. I think she was already on the ground when it happened. She must've tripped or something._

 _She would_ not _be okay. Even from this distance I could see her freaking guts spill out across the grass!_

" _N-no! Rachel!" we heard the woman yell. So that was the girl's name, I guess._

" _Is she dead?" I asked softly, tears in my eyes. I was beyond screaming._

 _Kim didn't respond. We could both see that Rachel was still moving._

" _Hypocrites! You don't care any more about these humans than we do!" the man they'd been talking to yelled in the background._

 _Then we watched the rhino double back toward Rachel again. It was definitely moving with a purpose somehow. It_ wanted _to kill her._

" _No!" Kim shrieked as the rhino stepped on Rachel's head. I felt my dinner come up._

* * *

Whoa!

That must have been one of Jessica's memories. I could totally see how Jessica would have flinched at getting these sorts of visions thrown at her randomly. It was really disturbing and realistic. Like I was actually there, but was helpless to do anything.

But if the Yeerk hadn't realized that Rachel wasn't _actually_ dead, did it not have control over my memories yet? I mean, clearly it could see what I was thinking to some degree, because it knew about Aftran. But Aftran had control over my memories from the first second. As in, I couldn't even decide what to remember. Unlike this Yeerk I hadn't been resisting Aftran at all, but still.

The Yeerk didn't seem to have control over my body yet either, actually. Unless it enjoyed lying on the floor in this extremely uncomfortable position. I put it to the test by trying to move my head.

You know that feeling when your arm or leg falls asleep at night and you can only barely move it when you wake up, like it's made of lead? That's what my neck felt like.

But my head moved a little. And the Yeerk didn't like it.

≺Let me take control!≻ it yelled furiously.

It tried to roll me over, or push my body up to get me back on my feet, or something. I couldn't really tell, but I felt my muscles try to do things that I wasn't telling them to. Still, the Yeerk seemed to be having at least as much trouble as I was.

It was like a tie, like it was still undecided who'd be in control in the end. Could I beat it somehow, the same way Jessica had?

≺Jessica didn't beat me! Something went wrong! Give me _control_!≻

It was completely desperate. Part of me felt sorry for it. But –

≺I don't need your pity, human!≻

≺Okay, fine! Have it your way, then. Here's what's going to happen if you stay inside me. My friends are going to hide me away for two days, and then you will die, slowly and painfully. Read my mind, I watched it happen to Jake.≻

On one of our missions, Jake had landed head-first in a mobile Yeerk pool. We kept him locked up and hidden away in an old shack in the forest for three days, while Ax had taken Jake's form to temporarily take over his life. I was there when the Yeerk finally died inside him. It took hours, and it made Jake look absolutely miserable.

I could feel the Yeerk cower at seeing my memory.

≺Or you could leave me right now,≻ I added.

≺And have you put me in a jar to experiment on me while I eventually starve to death anyway? You can't hide your thoughts from me, human.≻

I felt my arm move by itself. I tried to move it back to fight the Yeerk, which made it twitch a lot, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't move it back now.

≺Yes… Soon your body will be mine to control.≻

I had to tell my friends that I was a Controller. I couldn't just leave it up to chance for them to find out. So I tried to scream, but by now the Yeerk had so much control over me that nothing more than a weak groan came out.

≺There is no escape. Your "friends" won't know you're under my control. Believe me, I can be very convincing…≻

The Yeerk was slowly but surely pulling me up to my feet now, and I was helpless to stop it. But still it didn't seem to realize who my friends were. It couldn't control my thoughts yet.

That gave me an idea. If the Yeerk couldn't control my thoughts, was I still in control over my morphing abilities? Would I be able to acquire the Yeerk?

The Yeerk stopped trying to pull me up when it read those thoughts. It was pretty alarmed and confused about my ability to morph.

It's not that I wanted to change into it or anything, by the way. But animals always go into some sort of trance for a good ten seconds when you do it. I figured it might just let me control myself again. And ten seconds would be enough for what I had in mind. All I had to do was make sure that my friends would get to me in time.

I started acquiring it. And it worked! I could feel the Yeerk sort of just fall asleep inside me. I had control again!

"Help me! I'm a Controller!" I yelled. Then I pulled myself up, stumbled over to the desk with all our medical equipment, grabbed the first empty injection needle I could get to, and filled it with ketamine. If the Yeerk could do it, so could I.

I roughly shoved the needle right into my arm, not wasting any time to find the right spot. It hurt, but I'd be able to morph to heal later.

The Yeerk woke up again. It was scared now. ≺Who _are_ you?≻ it asked in disbelief.

I couldn't help but think about it. Literally, now. The ketamine was already making me sleepy. But it didn't seem to affect the Yeerk. So it managed to take control.

 _My name is Cassie. I'm an Animorph. Jake, Marco, Rachel, Tobias, Ax and I fight the Yeerks._

My muscles became numb. I fell on the floor. Ow!

 _Rachel and Jordan aren't dead. We staged it. The Chee helped us with that._

 _They will capture me and hold me until the Yeerk inside me starves to death. Until then, they will examine it and Jessica to find out why it couldn't control her._

That thought repeated a couple times. It made me sleepy.

I saw blue hooves appear in front of me. I smiled. Hi, Ax!

≺You leave me no choice.≻

The voice was angry and scared. Silly voice, Ax is sweet.

≺You killed me, Cassie! _You!_ Don't ever think you're any better than a Yeerk!≻

Whuh?

Ow, my ear!

Gone now.

Sleepy time.


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter 10**

* * *

Darkness.

Darkness and despair.

≺You killed me,≻ echoed through my mind.

I moved my arms to push myself up. But the ground was moving and squishy. Alive. Until I pressed down. I felt my hands squish the life right out of it.

≺You killed me.≻

I looked at my hand. There was gray blood on it.

I killed it. A sentient lifeform. Thinking, feeling. I… I didn't mean to! Did I?

≺Don't ever think you're any better than a Yeerk!≻

I… Maybe I did…

I backed away from what was left of the Yeerk.

Go away! I had no choice!

I skittered backward as fast as I could, but the Yeerk's remains had gotten so big that they towered over me. I turned around to run faster.

But the road was blocked by the termite queen. My master. She was commanding me to turn back to the Yeerk. To clean it up, like a good little termite.

But I didn't. I put all my effort into ignoring her, into disobeying. Then I opened my massive pincer jaws and snapped her head off.

I felt her die inside me. No longer was she capable of telling me what she wanted me to do. She would never want anything again.

It _was_ my fault! I did everything I could to kill her, so I must have _wanted_ to kill her!

"Are you okay now?"

Rachel's voice, behind me. I turned around and found her hugging me.

"No! I'm not okay!" I yelled at her. "I'm a murderer! I don't want to become like you!" I shoved her away from me.

I pushed right through her stomach!

She stared at her crushed lower body in disbelief for a few seconds, then looked back up. She looked hurt. _Emotionally_ hurt. Then she stormed out of the barn I now found myself in.

I backed up again, tears streaming down my face.

I didn't mean to say that last bit! I didn't mean to hurt her!

But my back bumped into something cold and hard and sharp. I quickly turned around.

It was a dead Hork-Bajir. His throat had been ripped out and one of his legs had been gnawed apart.

And I knew why. I'd done it. I'd killed him. I could feel a sliver of his silver flesh still stuck between my teeth.

Just another one of my victims. The Yeerk that was still inside him, too.

≺His name was Estril seven-three-one, of the Hett Simplat pool,≻ I heard Aftran inside my head. ≺My brother.≻

How do I sleep at night at all? Have I really become a cold-blooded murderer?

Something warm landed on my face! I couldn't tell what it was. I tried to push it away, but I couldn't move. I couldn't see. All I could sense was a warm, wet feeling on my forehead.

Something alive? Something that _used to be_ alive?

Somewhere off in the distance, I heard someone call my name. The voice was angry.

Mom?

The warm thing was soft and wet. Like damp cloth.

≺You killed me.≻

The Yeerk…?

Suddenly everything became light. I tried to blink it away, but it wasn't working.

My eyes slowly adjusted to the light, though. A human-like shape, on its side and out of focus, was looking at me.

Its skull had been crushed like Rachel's!

I tried to back away from it, but my body still refused to move.

Slowly but surely the shape came into focus. After eventually managing to blink a few times, I could see that it was Mom, and that her head was fine.

Had I been imagining it?

Ketamine?

≺You killed me, Cassie! _You!_ Don't ever think you're any better than a Yeerk!≻

Was that real?

Yes, that was real. I remember it. I killed it… Why?

≺You leave me no choice.≻

Why?

 _They will capture me and hold me until the Yeerk inside me starves to death. Until then, they will examine it and Jessica to find out why it couldn't control her._

"Mom?" I tried to say. Something garbled came out.

She didn't respond. She looked absolutely furious. So furious, that I remember wondering if I was imagining it. I don't remember ever having seen her that furious before then.

"How many fingers?" she asked coldly after waiting a couple minutes, holding up three fingers.

"Three," I said weakly. She did it two more times. "Four. One."

"Now that you're back in the real world, would you mind telling me what happened?" she ordered.

I squeezed my eyes shut to try to get my brain to function and work out an excuse. I had one _heck_ of headache. I figured I'd hit my head on the corner of the operating table while falling. Or maybe it was just the ketamine.

"I…" I eventually tried, but nothing more came out.

"Maybe _this_ will refresh your memory?" She held up the syringe that I'd used to sedate myself with.

"I-it was an accident," I managed to say.

"An _accident?_ "

She paused, expecting me to elaborate. But I didn't know what to add to that.

"That's it? That's your excuse?" she finally huffed, then looked away.

Dad entered the room. "She's awake?"

Mom just nodded.

He turned to me. "Well, you'll be pleased to know that the fox is doing okay. No thanks to you."

Terrific, even Dad was properly mad at me for some reason. I wasn't sure why they were acting this way, yet. I shut my eyes again.

"How long have you been doing this?" Mom snapped at me suddenly.

"Doing _what?_ " I asked desperately, still kind of slurring my words.

"Drugs, Cassie!"

Huh? Drugs?

"It was just ketamine…"

What I'd meant to convey was that it was a sedative, not a drug. I didn't even know at the time that some idiots use ketamine recreationally. I truthfully can't even imagine it. Waking up from that was _not_ a good time. Why are some people so weird?

Needless to say, it was the wrong answer. Mom got up and leaned forward against the wall, trying to work out how to respond.

Dad took over for her. "It doesn't matter what substance you use! Ketamine can be just as addictive and dangerous as other drugs. Is _this_ what you've been hiding from us the past couple of months? Did you lie to the police when you said you didn't have anything to do with Rachel's drug dealing?"

"No! It was an accident!"

"How stupid do you think we are?" Mom snapped at me again. "You don't _accidentally_ inject yourself with something!"

"Look, we want to help you," Dad reasoned, ignoring Mom's outburst. "But you have to tell us the truth."

I was too confused and upset to respond. The connection between being accused of taking drugs and being found on the floor next to an empty ketamine syringe still hadn't quite taken shape in my head yet, but I figured they had plenty of reasons to be angry with me anyway. Sure, I wasn't addicted to drugs, but I _was_ a murderer, for one thing.

Or well, I guess that depends on your definition of murder. But the point is that I _felt_ like a murderer. And in any case, I definitely wasn't the innocent girl they thought I was, and I _had_ been lying to them about all kinds of things for months.

"Okay, that's it," Dad said when his patience ran out as well. "You're grounded. The operating room and barn are off limits. Your mom and I can handle your chores for a while. You got that?"

I nodded slowly. They left the room.

That never happened before, by the way. My parents being this angry with me. Maybe all my lying and hiding made them think they weren't getting through to me or something, or that I just didn't care. But they were. And I did.

And not letting me do my chores? I guess this might sound weird, but that was about the most painful punishment they could have possibly given me. Pretty much all my chores have to do with caring for our animals. I _like_ doing them. And they might have distracted me from my thoughts. Getting confined to my room like that was hell.

But what hurt me above all is that they didn't trust me anymore. And I guess they were right not to.

I curled up, hugged my pillow, and retreated back into my realm of half-awake nightmares and hallucinations as the adrenaline from getting lectured wore off.


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter 11**

* * *

I don't remember much from the hour or so that followed other than hearing my parents yell at each other downstairs and my brain feeling like mush. I'd tried to figure out a better excuse, or even just to worry about what ended up happening to Jessica or my friends, but I just couldn't focus on any single thought for long enough.

What I _do_ remember is that Ax started talking to me at some point, although I don't really remember what he said. I think he might have come up to my room in fly morph, because I vaguely remember picturing myself swatting a fly and enjoying watching it slowly die. Not because I thought it was Ax, of course – I don't think I'd even made the connection between Ax and that fly at the time – but because that was the kind of person I felt like I was turning into.

The first thing I remembered properly was Jake.

≺Cassie?≻ he asked, jolting me awake.

I groaned. "Huh?"

≺Can I come in?≻

"Well… My parents might barge in to yell at me some more at any time," I moped. "So, not a good idea."

≺Do they… think you're on drugs, too?≻

"Bingo."

He waited a couple seconds before continuing. ≺Listen… I hate doing this, because I know this is a bad time, but we still have Jessica to deal with. Here's what happened while you were knocked out. Rachel and Jordan intercepted Jessica after your mom kicked her out, pretending to be Andalites. Erek figured out that we're not being watched, so now Ax and Tobias are taking her to the forest hideout, where Rachel and Jordan will pretend to be normal humans being hidden by the Andalites. The plan right now is that we'll skip school tomorrow and go to the international airport to intercept Jessica's mom before the Yeerks do. Then hopefully she'll know where to go from there.≻

"You're right, this _is_ a bad time," I said harshly when he finished. "I'm sorry, but I'm not skipping school tomorrow. I'm in enough trouble with my parents already."

≺It's okay. We can handle this without you if you want. The reason I'm bothering you with all this _at all_ right now is that Ax _really_ wants to know what happened when the Yeerk infested you. He said you even managed to call for help after being infested?≻

I sighed. I didn't want to talk about it. All I wanted to do was cry myself to sleep again. But even in my abysmal mood, I knew that Jake was right to ask. I had to just get this over with.

"The Yeerk had trouble controlling me too, but not as much as it had controlling Jessica, because I could hardly move and it could sort of move me. But it didn't get control over my thoughts and memories until I injected myself with ketamine. I had to make it sleepy by acquiring it to get enough control to do that."

≺Wait, so you can morph into that Yeerk now?≻ Marco said. I guess he was listening in as well. Great. I was definitely not in the mood to talk to him right now. It's not that I dislike him or anything, but he's not exactly the most sensitive member of the group.

"What's your point?"

≺That means that you can morph and try to take over Jessica!≻ he said, suddenly excited. ≺Then we can do pretty much any experiment we –≻

"No," I interrupted him.

≺Huh? "No," what?≻

"No, I won't morph that Yeerk."

≺Why not?≻ He was legitimately confused. ≺Sure, morphing a Yeerk is disgusting, but –≻

"I _killed_ that Yeerk, Marco!" I snapped. "No, I'm not going to morph it!"

≺Cassie, Ax said it killed itself,≻ Jake reasoned.

"Because of me!"

≺Man, not this again…≻ Marco groaned. ≺Cassie, it was a Yeerk. They are our enemy. They –≻

I think he was half trying to be funny, truly believing that there was objectively nothing morally unjust about all this, and that I was just pretending to care or was confused or something. But I _did_ care, and I wasn't about to have a philosophical debate about it.

So I exploded. I don't normally explode.

"Screw you! Yeerks are sentient beings. I sensed its feelings as it decided to kill itself! Blaming _me_ for not giving it any choice! It didn't ask to get stuck with Jessica and then me, just like I didn't ask to be an Animorph, and it ended up having to kill itself anyway, to not betray everything it believed in. Me morphing it now so we can go do exactly what it died trying to prevent would make me even _worse_ than a Yeerk!"

≺Okay,≻ he said in the most belittling way possible in thought-speak. ≺Allow me to explain exactly why we're going to risk revealing ourselves to someone we've never met and might be a Controller tomorrow. If we can work out why Jessica can't be controlled, we might be able to weaponize it. Inoculate every human being with some anti-Yeerk-mind-control vaccine. They'd have no reason to take human hosts anymore. It's, like, the most "Cassie" weapon I can think of, because it wouldn't even kill them. How can you be _against_ this?≻

"Leave me alone!" I yelled, frustrated by not having a counterargument ready because, well, he was right. I was a little too loud.

"Cassie?" I heard Dad call to me.

≺We're meeting at Erek's house tomorrow morning ten o'clock. See you there. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go home or Dad will have _me_ for dinner.≻

I heard his talons scrape against the roof as he took off. Then I heard Dad walk up the stairs. A few seconds later he opened my bedroom door and looked around.

"Who were you talking to?"

He was still angry, but was mostly confused right then.

"No one," I grumbled, angry that I had to lie yet again. "Myself," I corrected when I saw that he wasn't buying it.

"You yelled 'leave me alone,'" he noted.

"So I guess I was dreaming or something. I'm fine."

"Dreaming about what?"

"I don't remember."

Dad thought for a moment. He clearly realized that literally everything I'd said was a lie.

"Well, when you finally _do_ decide to talk, you know where to find us," he finally said. Then he left.

≺I'm sorry…≻ Jake said.

I didn't respond.

≺Look, I won't force you to come along tomorrow to help us by morphing that Yeerk,≻ he continued. ≺But Marco's right. This could be a major breakthrough, and we really need that Yeerk to have a decent chance at figuring this out. The longer we wait, the greater the odds of Jessica's mom getting infested, if she isn't already. So please think it over.≻

He clearly hated having to talk me into this. Jake never wanted to be the leader of the group. It just kind of happened because everyone else looks to him, whether he wants us to or not.

I still didn't respond.

≺Well, I guess I'll leave you alone, then. Like Marco said, we'll meet tomorrow morning at Erek's place if you decide to come along.≻

Part of me wanted him to stay. For him to demorph and comfort me while I'd cry my eyes out. But an equally big part of me hated him right then for taking Marco's side. So I stayed silent until I heard him leave, too.

Mom came to get me about half an hour later. "Dinner," she said.

She didn't seem _as_ angry as she was before, but she still wasn't exactly in a good mood. So even though I didn't feel like eating at all, let alone eating with my parents, I decided not to argue, and followed her downstairs.

I sat down at the table without saying a word, avoiding eye contact. They did the same. Maybe they were just as unsure about how to deal with all this as I was.

I practically panicked a couple minutes in. How could I ever fix this?! The only thing I could think of was to try to tell them the whole truth, but I didn't think they'd even listen to me anymore. I'd probably have to morph to get their attention or something, but then they'd likely just freak out and call an ambulance before I could do anything about it. And even if I _could_ get them to believe me… Well, I still wasn't quite sure what they'd do. But I didn't like _any_ of the possibilities that went through my head.

I put down my cutlery, covered my face, and tried to no avail not to cry. My parents didn't seem to respond.

I figured I'd have to go along with it. Pretend that I was at least experimenting. I wasn't sure if they'd believe even that, though. You'd think that having your best friend die because of drugs would make you not experiment with drugs. Probably the only thing they'd believe would be that I'd been addicted to ketamine for _at least_ a couple weeks now.

But then what could I even say for them to not be this angry with me?

Nothing, I concluded by the time I'd finished eating everything I was going to eat. Even apologizing would just sound like a lie at this point. Like I was just trying to get around being grounded, so I could get to more drugs.

"I'm done," I said weakly, and got up. My parents had long finished eating already. I went back to my room and curled up on my bed again.

Eventually I calmed down a little, and truly thought about what Marco had said. A vaccine against Yeerk mind control…

I never really dared to think about how we could ever win from the Yeerks. I guess deep down I always knew what the answer would be. Either they'd enslave us, or – unlikely, from what we've seen – the Andalites would somehow drive them off or kill them all. But a vaccine like that might actually work. If they don't decide to just kill everyone who's vaccinated, that is… But at least then they'd have to fight six billion people.

I also figured it wouldn't matter that much if I'd skip school the next day. I mean, surely my parents couldn't get any _more_ disappointed in me?


	12. Chapter 12

**Chapter 12**

* * *

I had another restless night, despite being completely exhausted. I don't think I'd slept more than half an hour at a time before waking up from some nightmare.

During breakfast my parents tried to get me to talk about my "addiction" again, but I hardly said anything at all. I felt so guilty about planning to ignore not only school rules, but also my house arrest… I was worried I wouldn't be able to hide it if I'd let them coerce me into _any_ kind of conversation.

I left home without so much as saying goodbye to Mom. I didn't talk to Dad while he drove me to school, either. Man, was I going to regret that, later.

I sat through first period despite planning to skip most of the day. Maybe I was still convincing myself to actually do it.

But I didn't really have a choice. I had to take my responsibility as an Animorph. The Yeerks weren't going to magically disappear on their own, no matter how badly I wanted them to, and it was just plain unfair to leave all the fighting to my friends.

So I snuck out between first and second period. I figured I'd morph osprey to get to Erek's place, so I found myself a nice and quiet alley.

Even though morphing is based on DNA, we can fortunately morph skintight clothing. Things would have been a lot more awkward all the time if it weren't for that. So I always wear a leotard under my normal clothes now.

It was raining, so I stripped down and stuffed my normal clothes in my backpack as fast as I could to keep them as dry as possible. Then I hid my backpack and my coat behind a dumpster. I'd been smart enough to leave my schoolbooks in my locker at school, so if my backpack would get stolen, at least I wouldn't have to explain losing those.

I was soaking wet and freezing by the time I was finally ready to morph. Fortunately, ospreys are built for diving into rivers to catch fish. I hardly even noticed the rain anymore when my skin finished melting into feathers.

While you're in morph, you get the instincts of the animal you become. Like, the animal mind sort of merges with your own. For some animals it's an awesome feeling, for others it's terrifying. It's been awesome for every bird I've been so far.

Being able to fly is the most amazing feeling of freedom. And their sight, oh man, don't get me started. Human senses are always so incredibly dull after coming out of a bird morph. As a human, I could barely see the wall at the end of the alley because of the rain, but when I got my osprey eyes, I could easily see the individual droplets streaming down along it.

I'd gotten used to it over time, though. And I didn't have time to mess around. I was already late. So I took to the skies. As soon as I got line of sight to the roof of Erek's house, I could make out five seagulls and a red-tailed hawk perched in a row along the edge of it.

≺I'm coming…≻ I thought-spoke to them unhappily when I got within range.

≺Hey,≻ Jake said. ≺So… you've decided…?≻

≺I still feel absolutely terrible about it, but I guess Marco's right… Having a defense against Yeerk mind control could prevent a lot of bloodshed on _both_ sides of the war.≻

≺I'm glad you've come to your senses,≻ Marco said somewhat smugly.

I couldn't tell which of the seagulls was who, but one of them pecked at another. I'm guessing it was either Rachel or Jake telling Marco not to push it.

≺Then can we tell her _now_?≻ Jordan asked.

≺Tell me what?≻ I responded.

≺Jessica, I mean.≻

≺We've been pretending to all be Andalites so far,≻ Rachel explained. ≺But Jessica barely trusts us. There's no way she'd just let us infest her with a Yeerk.≻

≺And she thinks she got _you_ infested, which she feels really bad about.≻ Jordan added.

≺The current lie wouldn't hold up anyway if she ever gets infested by a real Yeerk again,≻ Tobias added. ≺The only way for us to have access to that Yeerk morph is if you're one of us.≻

The group was silent for a moment. I reached the roof and perched down near them.

≺I suppose we can tell her on our way to the airport,≻ Jake finally said. ≺Erek, Jessica, we're ready,≻ he added, now including them as well. The rest of the conversation had been private to the seven of us.

A minute later, an adult man and a girl left Erek's house and walked to a car. I'd never seen either of them before. The girl sat in the front passenger seat while the man seemed to open the right rear door for no one in particular.

"Come on in," he said.

My friends all dove down into the car.

≺Huh?≻

≺That man's Erek, he changed his hologram for this,≻ Jake clarified. ≺The girl's Jessica.≻

≺Oh,≻ I said, and followed suit.

Erek closed the door behind me and then got in the driver's seat. Then he and Jessica turned into their usual selves again. I figured Erek had extended the hologram to surround the entire car.

"It will take about two hours to get to the airport, so get comfortable," he said as he started the car.

≺Well, let's hope that Erek's a better driver than Rachel,≻ Marco joked.

≺Ha-hah, very funny,≻ Rachel responded.

≺Look who's talking…≻ I said to Marco simultaneously.

It's a bit of a long story, but Marco had to take my dad's truck once. Rachel had lost her memory after slamming into a tree in eagle form and was walking around the neighborhood confusedly. The Yeerks were after her, guided by this massively dangerous dust cloud tornado lifeform thing from Saturn that could detect morphing. That dust cloud thing showed up half a mile away, clearly tracking Rachel, while Marco, Jake, and I happened to be standing around my dad's old pickup truck.

Needless to say, it didn't end well for the truck.

≺Yeah, Rachel didn't try to play whack-a-mole with trash cans,≻ Jake added.

≺Hey, I had to get places _fast_. Rachel had to stay hidden,≻ Marco retorted. ≺It's completely different!≻

≺Rachel _did_ hit one trash can, actually,≻ Jordan said.

≺Traitor!≻ Rachel shouted at her.

≺See? _See?!_ ≻ Marco yelled at the same time.

≺I'm pretty sure Rachel had a concussion, though,≻ Tobias said. ≺And she didn't hit anything after morphing to heal.≻

≺Oh? I seem to recall a picture of Rachel's mom's car "parked" against a tree. I'm sure _that_ was intentional?≻

≺ _I_ seem to recall Cassie's dad's truck "parked" upside down in a ditch,≻ Rachel said.

≺ _Totally_ my plan all along!≻

≺After running into me and crushing my leg?≻

≺Hey, in my defense, elephants don't normally stand around in the middle of the road. And I was a gorilla at the time.≻

≺Just admit it already. I drive better than you do. _Anyone_ would drive better than you do.≻

Well, at least my friends were having fun. I still felt terrible, but seeing them like that did cheer me up a little.

Jessica looked back at us over her shoulder nervously. She couldn't hear any of our thought-speak banter, but she could see and hear Rachel and Marco pecking and shoving each other as their bird instincts followed along. We probably didn't look like the professional Yeerk hunters she was hoping for.

≺Okay, that's enough,≻ Jake laughed. ≺Let's get down to business.≻

Jake explained the plan to me. Jessica had told my friends that her mom, Sharon, would arrive at the international airport sometime that afternoon, so that's where we were headed.

There's an airport much closer by. We'd hitched a ride on a plane taking off from there as flies once. Bad idea, by the way. But that was just an inland flight. The local airport isn't nearly big enough for international flights.

The airport we were going to was close to the university where Jessica's mom worked, though. So even if she would've arrived at the local airport, we'd still have had to drive all the way out there to get to whatever tools she'd need to examine Jessica.

Jessica obviously didn't know the flight number, but she did remember that the conference was in Osaka. So at the airport we'd just have to look for arrivals from there to find her.

Erek would generate hologram disguises around us, so us humans could hang around the baggage claim area without running the risk of being recognized by anyone. Erek could render Tobias invisible as long as he'd sit on one of our shoulders, but Ax would have to morph human. His natural form is a bit too large for a human hologram, and people would run into him if he'd be invisible like Tobias.

In addition to being a disguise, Erek said we'd be able to talk to each other through our holograms. Like those tiny in-ear walkie-talkies from spy movies. That could be useful in a place as busy and noisy as an airport.

We'd have to stick relatively close to Erek, though. His holograms don't have a range after which they stop working completely, but he has to stay within about a hundred feet to animate them. Without him, he said our disguises would basically turn into limp ragdolls around us, and we wouldn't be able to see or even breathe properly anymore.

Finding Sharon was the easy part of the plan. The hard part was figuring out for sure whether she was a Controller, and getting her to cooperate if not. All without revealing that we're humans instead of Andalites, in case she'd ever be infested.

The plan was for one of us to approach Sharon with a hologram disguise of Visser Three's human morph. We hadn't figured out who was going to do it or what they'd tell her exactly, but they'd have to get Sharon to follow them to some quiet place. Once there, they'd bark some meaningless orders at her, and we'd judge her reaction. Any Controller would respond with "Yes, Visser" or something along those lines, while any normal person would just freak out.

If Sharon would turn out to be a Controller, we'd just let her go. Otherwise, we'd drop the Visser Three act and tell her that we're the good aliens who're hiding her daughter away from the bad aliens, and that we needed her help.

After Jake ran me through the plan, we had a short discussion about how much we'd tell Jessica. In the end, we decided to just tell her everything. Mostly because I knew for _sure_ that I wouldn't be able to hide anything from her if I'd indeed end up infesting her.

Jake spent about a minute trying to figure out how to phrase it.

≺Jessica?≻

"Y-yeah?" She looked back over her shoulder again, trying to pinpoint which of the birds was talking to her. She was clearly still very nervous about the whole thing.

≺We haven't told you the whole truth so far… Not because we don't trust you, but…≻

Jake was already lost for words, so I took over for him.

≺We can't really trust anyone, because anyone could be or become a Controller. And if the Yeerks ever find out who we are, we're toast.≻

"Well… Who are you, then?"

≺I'm Cassie.≻

Her eyes widened. "H-huh?" she stammered. "B-but you're a bird…"

≺I'm the osprey, to be exact. But yeah. Only one of us is actually an Andalite. The rest of us are human kids with the power to morph. We call ourselves the Animorphs.≻

≺I made it up,≻ Marco said. ≺Get it? Animal-morphers.≻

≺I don't think you had to explain that, Marco,≻ Rachel said. ≺And don't act so proud about it, you made it up to mock the whole thing.≻

"W-wait, b-but my Yeerk… Cassie…"

≺Do not worry, the Yeerk that had infested you is dead,≻ Ax said. ≺It disintegrated itself using its fail-safe device after Cassie warned me and injected herself with the ketamine sedative. All Yeerks carry such a device, to prevent –≻

≺Guess which one of us is the Andalite?≻ Marco interrupted.

≺Did I… say something inappropriate?≻

≺Nah, Marco's just messing with you,≻ Tobias said.

"Why are you telling me all this _now?_ "

≺Because of me,≻ I said. ≺I… um… Well, I managed to overpower the Yeerk by acquiring it. That means I can morph into it now. I…≻

I stopped talking. Not only did I still feel bad about morphing the Yeerk at all, but Jessica would probably not appreciate being infested again. Even if it's not by a real Yeerk.

≺We have a much better chance of determining why the Yeerk could not control you if we monitor the infestation process, and –≻ Ax started explaining again.

"Hang on. You're saying you want to wrap Cassie around my brain? Are you serious? Over my dead body!"

≺I don't want to do it, either!≻ I said quickly. ≺That's why my friends didn't tell you the whole truth before. They had no reason to until I agreed to this. But maybe if we can work out why Yeerks can't control you, or at least why that one Yeerk couldn't, we can work out a way to use it against them. To free people from their enslavement. Like… Like your dad and Kim.≻

Jessica looked away guiltily.

≺And Mom and Sarah…≻ Jordan added.

≺And my brother, and Marco's mom,≻ Jake completed the list. ≺None of us asked to learn about the Yeerks. But we all have reasons to fight them, and even if we didn't, it'd still be our responsibility to the rest of humanity to do so. So far we haven't had any real weapons. But you might be the key to making people Yeerk-resistant. Finding out a way to do that is worth…≻

He paused. Maybe he was trying to find the right euphemism, to not make it sound like he would risk Jessica's life for it. But he didn't have to.

"It's worth dying for," Jessica finished for him.


	13. Chapter 13

**Chapter 13**

* * *

"It feels so weird to be human in a public place again…" Rachel said as we walked across the international arrivals hall to look for a place to settle down.

It was huge. A bit like the mall, but at least a dozen times larger in all directions. It was also at least a dozen times as crowded. Rachel didn't care about that; heck, I think it's one of the things she _liked_ about the mall. I didn't. I wanted to find a relatively quiet corner as quickly as I could.

≺It also feels pretty weird to sit on your shoulder in a public place,≻ Tobias responded.

" _I_ just feel weird looking like a _different_ human in a public place," Marco said. "What if _the one_ is here? She wouldn't even recognize me!"

"That's probably a good thing in your case," Rachel teased.

Erek took exactly one look at the huge arrival information boards. "There. Jessica's mom will arrive at 13:42 at gate 105."

"That is ninety-two of your minutes from now," Ax calculated. "NNNinety-two miNNNutes."

Ax doesn't have a mouth in his Andalite form, so whenever he morphs human he can't help but mess around with it. And don't let him near anything that so much as _looks_ like it could be food if you don't want him to eat it.

We were all hungry for lunch, though, and we still had some time. So we sat down at a buffet-style restaurant, at the table that was the furthest away from the actual buffet. We went to get food in two groups, leaving Ax at the table both times, so we could keep him in check. He's _that_ dangerous around food.

Of course, none of us so much as managed to eat half of what we got before Ax happened. Fortunately Erek was buying, so we didn't have to waste our allowance on almost rupturing Ax's stomach with stupidly expensive airport food.

"Is he… always like that?" Jessica had asked at some point, a combination of mesmerized and worried by the sheer amount of food – and non-food – he was rapidly stuffing himself with. Jordan was staring at him, too.

"Yup," everyone else had responded in unison.

After lunch, we headed for the baggage claim area to look for a quiet spot. Now, if you've ever been to a big international airport before, you've probably already guessed how that part of the plan would be problematic. Every place where people were allowed to go was packed, and there was security and CCTV everywhere else.

≺I don't think this is going to work,≻ Tobias said after we finished our second circle along the walls of the arrivals hall. We'd been walking around for a good twenty minutes already.

Jake stopped walking, so the rest of us stopped, too. He looked around helplessly for a couple seconds.

"This was supposed to be the easy part of the plan…" he muttered to himself, only barely audible through the hologram walkie-talkies.

"So, now what?" Jordan asked.

Jake sighed when he noticed everyone was looking at him, as usual. "I guess if we can't find a good place to do it here, we'll just have to follow Sharon when she leaves the airport and find a way to intercept her later. Jessica, do you have any idea where she'd go?"

She shrugged. "I don't know. I mean, she has a car, but the parking here is huge… And I don't even know if she left it here or at the university. And who knows where she'd go after that, assuming she knows that I'm missing. Probably straight home or the police station, or wherever else Dad is right now."

Jake didn't respond for a while. "Guys, I'm open to suggestions," he eventually said.

"I suppose I could place a fake out-of-order sign on one of the restrooms and sabotage the door handle mechanism so it won't open while we wait for Sharon," Erek said. "But it's risky, because airport staff might take notice. I think our best bet would be the entry to the men's restroom at the far end of the hall, because it is in a CCTV blind spot."

"You mean the one all the way over there?" Marco said while pointing off into the distance. "That's a pretty long walk for our buddy Visser Three. Forget about airport staff. _Controllers_ might take notice."

"I'm sorry. I don't have a better solution for you."

"What would you guys say to Mom anyway?" Jessica asked. "Somehow I don't think she'd follow some random guy into an out-of-order bathroom."

"Just have Marco play Visser Three, he can talk women into anything," Rachel joked. "Right, Marco?"

"Of course," he responded confidently, much to Rachel's amusement.

"Very funny. This is my mom you're talking about, and she's landing in like twenty minutes. Focus, please?"

"Yeah, guys, Jessica has a point," Jake said. "It'd seem pretty sketchy from Sharon's point of view if she's not a Controller."

"If she knows Jessica is missing, she'll probably be worried sick about her," I said. "So if we tell her it's about her she'd probably come along, right?"

"With some random guy?" Jessica argued. "Why would some random guy even know about me? That just makes it even sketchier, like the guy kidnapped me or something. Or maybe just read about me in a newspaper and figured he could use it to get under her skin. You'd be surprised how sick people can be. I've heard plenty of stories from Dad, before…" She stopped talking and looked away for a second. "My point is, I don't think Mom would fall for it. She'd hightail it to the first guard she finds."

"I could give Visser Three's hologram a police uniform," Erek said.

She thought for a moment. "I guess that _might_ work, if the uniform includes a proper police badge… But I don't know for how long. She'd probably expect to hear police news about me from my dad directly."

"That's good enough, though, right?" Marco said. "It only has to work for a few minutes. Visser Three walks up to Sharon dressed as a cop, and tells her to follow him to the restroom to talk privately, saying it's about you. He just brushes off any questions she might ask along the way. Once they get to the restroom, he drops the cop act and orders her to go to the Yeerk pool for further instructions. Done."

"Huh? But then how are you going to help her if she's a Controller?" Jessica asked.

Oops. We hadn't really considered how Jessica would feel about us just giving up and moving on in that case. We didn't even mention it when we ran her through the plan earlier because it seemed so obvious to all of us.

None of us really knew what to say. Even Marco looked away, although that shouldn't have surprised me, considering what the Yeerks did to his family.

Marco's mom was probably one of the first humans to ever be taken host. She's host to Visser One – the highest ranking Visser of the Yeerks. A little over two years ago the Yeerks faked her death, so Visser One could move around more freely. It left Marco's dad with a crippling depression, which didn't exactly make coming to terms with her apparent death any easier for Marco.

At first Jessica just seemed confused, like she was missing some obvious part of the plan to save Sharon. But she quickly caught on.

"Well?" she pressed us.

Everyone's eyes turned to Jake again.

"We, um…" Jake started guiltily. "Well, there isn't much we can do for her if she's –"

"So you're not even going to _try?_ You told me you guys fight the Yeerks! So, fight!"

Jake was lost for words, so I took over for him again. "Jessica, the Yeerks are no joke… Going around trying to save individual people is just too risky. The first thing we ever did was try to free Jake's brother. I ended up almost infested, Tobias got stuck in hawk form, and we _still_ failed. Sometimes we get lucky, but most of the time…"

"I don't see why it should be so difficult. Order her to go to the forest hideout, wait for her there, and then lock her up for three days."

"No," Erek said, catching everyone by surprise.

"Huh? Why the heck not?"

"The hideout is one big hologram. Like all our technology, it would self-destruct if it detects that it is being used to kill. That includes killing Yeerks. And I will not have any more death on my conscience by helping you work around that."

Erek is the only Chee to have ever killed. When we met him, he _wanted_ to fight the Yeerks. Together, we found a way to remove his nonviolence restriction. He saved us all from certain death soon after, but after seeing what he was capable of, he quickly reinstated it.

Erek may be a robot, and his human form may be just a hologram, but that look of bitter sadness on his projected face after he saved us is not one I'll easily forget.

Jessica didn't know that, though. She looked at him like he'd betrayed her. Then she turned back to Jake and me. "Then send her elsewhere. I don't care. But if… if…" She looked away and paused, but then turned back to us two seconds later. "If you won't help my mom, then I'm not helping you."

We all fell silent.

I figured she was bluffing, but it didn't matter. We had to keep her on our side, because we all knew what we'd have to do to her if she'd turn on us.

"Prince Jake, I have been in morph for eighty percent of my time," Ax broke the silence. "Eeeight-tuh. Eeeeeighty. I should remorph before Sharon arrives."

"That's twenty-four more minutes," Erek calculated. "Sharon's plane lands in about ten."

"Okay, fine," Jake said, clearly frustrated. "If Sharon is a Controller, let's just order her to go to the trail parking lot at midnight tonight, so we can figure out what to do with her later. Right now we block off those restrooms, Ax remorphs in there, Marco can play Visser Three, and we'll just have to hope no one pays any unwanted attention to us. Erek, maybe you can find a way to keep her Yeerk alive without it being a danger to anyone. Okay? Can everyone live with that?"

Finally, no one objected.


	14. Chapter 14

**Chapter 14**

* * *

Blocking the restrooms took way longer than we wanted it to. It already took us five minutes just to walk back there.

It was easy, though. All we had to do was form a circle around the men's room entrance to hide Erek while he made the out-of-order sign hologram and hung it on the door. Then we just had to wait for everyone to leave.

That's the part that took the longest. We all got pretty antsy when Erek noted that Sharon's flight's status changed to "landed" while we were waiting.

"This is ridiculous," Jessica said. "Are we _sure_ there's still someone in there?"

"Yes," Erek said simply. No one asked him how he could be so sure from outside the restroom.

"Can't you chase him out or something?" Marco said. "I don't know, make a hologram of a fire alarm or something. Anything."

"I guess I could do that," Erek said. He looked at Jake.

"Fine, do it."

We faintly heard an evacuation alarm go off inside the restrooms. The final guy came running out half a minute later, with his fly still undone. He stopped running pretty quickly when he realized no one else was. For a second he just stood near us, carrying an expression that was halfway between confused and embarrassed. Then he walked off into the crowd.

Marco clearly had to restrain himself from bursting out into laughter.

"Poor guy," I said.

"Okay, let's hurry up, guys," Jake urged.

Ax and Marco quickly went inside to remorph and change holograms without being seen. Marco returned ten seconds later.

Even though I knew he wasn't the real Visser Three, a shiver went down my spine when I first saw him. Everyone except Erek and Jessica clearly felt just as intimidated. He was certainly believable.

"So, how do I look?" he asked. His voice was Visser Three's as well.

"Terrifying," I said honestly.

"Ouch," he joked.

"You don't sound much like Visser Three though," Rachel said. "Not 'psychopath' enough."

"Excuse me? You _dare_ talk to me like that?"

She actually took a step back.

≺Yeah, definitely terrifying,≻ Tobias agreed.

"Who is this Visser Three guy, anyway?" Jessica asked.

"Only the most psychotic and powerful Yeerk we know," Jake said. "Just hope you'll never get to meet him in person."

We still had to wait for Ax to remorph. Morphing takes about two to three minutes, and Ax had to do it twice to go back and forth. In hindsight, I suppose we could have left Ax there while the rest of us would look for Sharon, but no one said anything.

When we eventually got near the baggage claim, the eight of us sort of dispersed, so we wouldn't look like we were together.

Marco made a point of acting impatient while Jessica was looking for Sharon, so he would be believable to any nearby Controllers. Or maybe he was just nervous. There were a good number of people around who were sort of staring at him awkwardly. They might not all have been Controllers, though. A lot of normal people get uncomfortable around policemen, I think.

Thankfully, Jessica found Sharon pretty quickly. "There, I see her," she said just loud enough for us to hear her through the holograms.

"Okay, who is she?" Marco asked just as quietly.

"Uh… The woman with the black carry-on."

"Brilliant, that helps," he said sarcastically.

"Right… I'll just stand behind her."

Sharon wasn't among the people who seemed uncomfortable by Visser Three's apparent presence. That was a good sign, but we still had to be sure. So Marco walked up to her.

"Hey, you. Sharon. I need to talk to you about Jessica."

Sharon froze stiff when Marco said Jessica's name. "I-is she okay…?"

"I can't talk to you here. Follow me."

Sharon looked down at the police badge pinned to Marco's chest for a second or two. Then she turned to a younger man who stood beside her. "U-uh, Mark, c-can you look for my luggage as well?"

Mark looked between Marco and Sharon a couple times. "Sure…" he eventually said, not sounding very convinced. I caught him staring at Marco and Sharon as they walked away.

"Guys, this Mark guy seems pretty interested in Visser Three," I said, keeping my voice down. "What if he's a Controller and Sharon isn't?"

"Nothing we can do about it if that's the case," Jake said. "Do you know him, Jessica?"

"No," she responded.

I stayed too far behind Marco and Sharon to hear them directly, but through the holograms I could hear Marco tell her to stop asking questions a couple times. He made himself sound increasingly annoyed. Eventually either Sharon gave up or Marco just stopped responding.

≺Maybe we should walk ahead of them,≻ Tobias said at some point. ≺Make sure that the restroom is still clear.≻

"Good idea," Jake said, and increased his pace. The rest of us followed him in an arc around Marco and Sharon.

≺Exactly what I was worried about,≻ Tobias said when we were almost there. He and Rachel were leading the group, so they were the first to see through the crowd.

"Yeah, uh, guys, there's a guard and a janitor standing by the restroom, and they don't look happy," Rachel added.

≺The guard's talking on his walkie-talkie. I think they figured out that the sign is a fake and the door is locked…≻

"Then we need a distraction, quickly!" Jake hissed, trying to keep his voice down despite being pretty alarmed. "Any ideas?"

"Yeah, actually," Jessica said quickly. "If Erek can give me a hologram of a drink or something."

"Can do," he responded.

"Perfect," she smirked, looking at her newfound plastic cup. Then she grabbed Jordan's arm and quickly walked to the wall a good fifty feet to the left of the restroom doors. Just close enough for the guard and janitor to see them.

Rachel followed and grabbed Jessica's arm. "What do you think you're doing?" she demanded. She's a little protective of her sister.

To which Jessica intentionally spilled her cup of grape juice all over Rachel, Jordan, and the wall. I think she somehow managed to hit every single item of their clothing.

≺Whoa!≻ Tobias exclaimed.

Now, Rachel is by far the cleanest girl I know. The only other time I ever saw her in even slightly messed up clothes was the day after she got run over by her mom and had to spend the night in the mud. And even then she opted against dressing beyond her relatively clean leotard, despite the cold.

You should have seen her face. I think she might have forgotten for a moment that the clothes she was wearing were part of Erek's hologram and not her own.

It was funny at first. But between her ruined clothes and Jessica seemingly involving her sister in some plan she didn't know about, I think Rachel's brain just shut down altogether. She looked like she was torn between outright murdering Jessica and running to the women's restroom to save her clothes from certain death.

"Look what you made me do!" Jessica yelled, continuing her act. "First you make us lose Mom and Dad with your stupidity, and now this!" She threw the cup on the ground, ensuring that their shoes and the floor were also sufficiently covered by the remaining juice. Then she shoved Jordan for good measure, I guess to make it look like they were fighting so the guard would have to intervene.

"What did _I_ do?! It's not _my_ fault!" Jordan shouted. I think she'd realized what Jessica was doing and was acting along at this point.

But Rachel clearly hadn't. She gave Jessica a serious shove and pinned her against the wall.

"Ow!" she yelped in pain, clutching her shoulder. "Hey!"

"Hey, break it up," the guard yelled as he quickly pushed himself between the three of them. "There's no need to fight. We'll help find your parents. It's going to be okay."

The janitor had followed, too. He was staring at the wall and floor, knowing his day just got way worse. Or week. Grape juice stains are the worst.

Jake, Ax, and I had been watching the scene unfold from a bit of a distance. It took Marco and Sharon passing in front of us to snap us out of our trance.

Erek was already at the restroom door. He opened it for them, giving Marco a slight bow. Then he looked at us. "You should probably follow them inside, in case Sharon gets scared and tries to get away," he said through the walkie-talkies without moving his mouth. "I'll help the others."

Jake agreed and headed for the door. Ax and I followed.

"I've shut off your holograms' audio links so you won't be distracted," he added as he closed the door to the restroom behind us. "Good luck."


	15. Chapter 15

**Chapter 15**

* * *

Sharon stared at us as we walked in. She seemed very confused about three random kids following her and Marco inside.

"What's going on?" she said, turning back to Marco. "Why won't you tell me if my daughter is okay?"

"Don't play games with me. You know very well who I am."

Sharon didn't respond. No "Yes, Visser." But Marco wasn't convinced yet.

"I'm Visser Three, you idiot! I'm in my human morph. I brought you here because I think some of my servants might be working together with the Andalite bandits. I believe they helped Jessica get away from us. You will help me find her." Then he told her where to go exactly. That is, the trails parking lot, but he was more specific than that, of course. I just can't tell you.

Jake, Ax, and I were standing behind Sharon, so we couldn't see her face. But she was visibly shaking.

"I-I don't know what you're talking about, Officer…" she stammered. "I-I'll take this up with my husband, I think I'd like to leave now…"

"You will not leave until you acknowledge my order!"

She practically flinched.

When Sharon had walked into the restroom, she'd seemed mostly worried about Jessica. Now she seemed more worried about herself. After all, Visser Three's human morph is a pretty tough and scary looking guy even if you don't know him. And Sharon was pretty lightly built, and attractive, I suppose. The creepiness factor that Jessica was worried about was definitely there.

Marco looked past her to give Jake a look. He shrugged and gave him a thumbs-up in response.

"Okay, so you're probably not a Controller, then," he said to Sharon.

No response.

"We're actually the Andalite bandits," Marco added. "Wanna kill us now?"

Still no response. She was just staring at him confusedly and panicky. Any Controller would for sure have at least twitched at hearing that, even if Marco hadn't looked like Visser Three.

"I do not believe this woman is a Controller," Ax said.

Sharon jerked around and looked at Ax. "W-what… What are you all talking about?"

"Shh, it's okay," I tried to calm her. "We don't want to hurt you. But we had to make sure we could trust you."

She just stared at me.

"Jessica's with us," I added. "She, um… She got herself into some trouble, but she's safe, mostly."

"W-what do you mean 'mostly'…?"

"Well, she was shot in the shoulder, but we –"

" _Shot?_ " she repeated. "Is she okay?"

"She'll be fine, we patched her up. But the people who shot her are still looking for her. That's why she's with us, we're keeping her hidden."

"But…" she said, looking between Marco and me. "But my husband is with the police, too, and he personally called to tell me she was missing…"

"Your husband is the one who –" Marco started saying.

The entrance suddenly swung open behind me, shoving me so hard I almost lost my balance. I guess Erek didn't lock it again when he left. Some very agitated guy stormed in and slammed into Ax, who immediately lost his balance. "Hey!"

"'Hey', yourself!" Marco responded for Ax. "Can't you read? Get out of here!"

The man visibly jolted and looked at Marco like he'd seen a ghost. "V-Visser! Y-yes, Visser!" He ran back out as quickly as he could. I pushed the door shut behind him and pushed my body weight against it to keep it there.

We all just stared at each other for a couple of seconds to let our brains catch up with what had just happened. That was _so_ close. If we'd been morphing…

"Terrific," Marco said eventually. "Sharon, as much as I'd love to explain what –"

Then his hologram suddenly disappeared. Jake's and mine followed soon after. We still had our clothes, though. Jake's, Ax's, and mine were in sort of the right sizes, but Marco's police uniform draped down around him like a tent.

"Oh, that's just perfect," he added.

"What the heck happened?" Jake said. "Erek? Are you there?"

Silence.

"It would seem that Erek had to go out of range and canceled your disguise holograms," Ax said a second or two later.

"Maybe the guard took Jessica and the others somewhere and Erek had to follow them for their holograms," I said.

"Y-you mean Jessica's here?" Sharon stammered. Apparently that was more important than the three of us suddenly completely changing our appearance. Or maybe the Jessica part was just the only thing that made any sense to her.

Marco looked at Jake while trying to kick his oversized pants off. "I was about to say we should probably go somewhere a bit safer before explaining, but I'm not so sure anymore now, without disguises… And everyone's going to be staring at us if I'm walking around in just my morphing outfit."

"Can we brace the door or something?" he thought out loud, looking around the restrooms for anything that might help.

"I don't see how…" I said.

"Will one of you _please_ tell me what's going on?" Sharon interrupted. "Where are your parents?"

Marco chuckled at that. "Lady, we just changed appearance in front of your eyes. Before that, that random guy who walked in looked at us like he'd accidentally barged into the Oval Office and slammed into the First Lady. I think we should be well past the 'where are your parents' point."

He looked at Jake again. So did Sharon, at which point Marco gestured as if to ask Jake what to do with her.

Jake leaned back against the door next to me and covered his face. "I guess we might as well tell her _everything_ now that she's seen our faces…" he grumbled through his hands. "We have to wait for Erek to come back anyway."

"I guess we could also morph into flies and hitch a ride with Ax or Sharon," Marco suggested.

"Because turning into flies at an airport never gave us any problems," I said sarcastically.

"Okay, that's it, I'm out of here," Sharon said suddenly, and walked over to the door. "I don't want anything to do with whoever, o-or _whatever_ you all are!"

Jake stepped in her way, but she roughly pushed him aside and reached for the door handle. I quickly grabbed it with both hands and put my whole body weight behind pulling it up so Sharon couldn't easily push it down. Then Marco grabbed her from behind and started pulling her back.

"Let me go! And leave Jessica out of it!"

"Ax, we might need some firepower to convince her!" Jake said, propping himself up against the door again.

"Yes, Prince Jake."

Sharon initially didn't notice that Ax was demorphing, because she was so focused on the door. She kept throwing more and more force into the battle as she got more and more panicked, eventually going as far as scratching us with her nails and hitting us to get us to move. But we didn't budge.

She only stopped when she heard Ax rip out of his clothes and turned to see his half-Andalite half-human form.

She shrieked and suddenly backed up, sending Marco and herself hurtling to the ground. She landed mostly on top of him, but I don't think he was hurt too badly.

"Ow," he said. As in, he just said 'ow' to make a point.

"Now that we have your attention, again…" Jake began. "He's an alien. An Andalite. He's changing back into what he normally looks like. The three of us are humans, but we can morph, too."

"What is of _exceptional_ importance right now is that you, A, take this to your grave, and B, get off of me," Marco groaned. "This is _not_ comfortable."

Sharon slowly pulled herself up to her feet again, without taking her eyes off of Ax. Then I helped Marco get back up.

"Ow," he repeated.

"If you were to tell people about us, we'd all be dead by tomorrow, or worse," Jake continued. "And humanity will be nothing but slaves in a couple of years. So please hear us out."

I'm not sure Sharon was listening. She was still just staring at Ax as he finished his morph.

≺I am afraid that I would have to hurt you if you try to leave again,≻ he said. ≺I do not think Jessica would appreciate that.≻

His thought-speak startled her, breaking her out of her trance. "W-w-what did you do to Jessica…?"

We gave her the short version of the story. That the Yeerks are mind-controlling parasites. That her husband and probably Mark are Controllers, and that Jessica _almost_ was, too. How Jessica went to the Clinic to get her bullet wound treated after getting infested, how that got us involved, and how important it is that we figure out how Jessica's immunity works.

She seemed to accept the story, mostly. I mean, it's pretty hard not to when there's an Andalite staring you down with all four of his eyes. But specifically the part about us figuring out Jessica's immunity didn't sit well with her. Jake had used the word "experimenting," which arguably wasn't the best choice.

"So… what are you _going_ to do to Jessica?"

"We're not _going_ to do anything _to_ her," Jake answered, somewhat annoyed by her distrust. "But whether you help us or not, we… we have to keep you _both_ hidden. For your own protection, but also for _our_ protection. If the Yeerks ever get to either of you, they'll know who we are, and we'd be toast. You and Jessica included. So the two of you have to disappear."

"D-disappear…?"

"Did Jessica tell you about Rachel?" I asked. "The girl from school who died two weeks ago?"

Sharon nodded weakly.

"She's one of us, and she's not actually dead. We faked her death so the Yeerks would stop looking for her. We'll probably have to do something similar with you and Jessica. There's just no other way. I'm sorry."

"O-okay, but… you said you want to… e-experiment on Jessica…?"

≺Yes,≻ Ax said simply.

"W-what does that entail?"

Ax's stalk eyes looked between us, while his normal eyes stayed locked on Sharon. ≺I was under the impression that you would be able to help us with that.≻

"Huh?"

"We have no idea where to begin, basically," Jake clarified. "Jessica told us you're a professor at the university here, so we figured you'd be our best bet for getting help."

"M-my field is inorganic chemistry, not biology or medicine…"

≺Ah, but then you should at least have access to a chemical analyzer, yes?≻

Sharon stared at him blankly. "I-I'm sorry?"

≺A chemical analyzer. A device which lists all chemicals in a given mixture. Surely you have such a device? It would be impossible to practice your field without one.≻

"I-I… W-we use a variety of techniques to do what you want, but each of these techniques only work for certain classes of chemicals, and most take days if not weeks to process…"

Ax was silent for a moment. ≺To what "techniques" are you referring?≻ he asked skeptically.

"Mass spectrometry, chromatography, chemical indicators…"

Ax and Sharon continued discussing for a couple more minutes, with Ax growing increasingly desperate. Apparently Andalite technology was quite a bit more advanced in this field.

You never know with Andalites, though. Ax was extremely impressed when he first found out that humanity had invented books already.

Jake interrupted them eventually. "Look, I have no idea what half of those words mean, but it sounds like you'll figure something out, right?"

Sharon replied with a helpless shrug. Ax replied with an annoyed stare, for as far as Andalites have face expressions.

"What you should know, Sharon, because you're probably not going to like it, is that we're also planning to infest Jessica with Cassie while she's in Yeerk morph. That's what I meant by 'experimenting.' But we have no reason to believe that it's dangerous for her." He looked at Ax. "Right?"

≺For as far as I am aware, no host has ever been killed by the infestation process. Nor has the Yeerk. If it does happen, it must be extremely rare.≻

Sharon didn't seem very convinced. "But does it hurt?"

Jake and I looked away. Being infested is not a pleasant experience.

"Look, Sharon, whether you like it or not, we're –" Marco started saying, before getting interrupted by a particularly loud message from the airport PA system.

"Could the parents of Carol, Alice, and Beatrice Smith please report to information desk D. Repeat, the parents of Carol, Alice, and Beatrice Smith to information desk D."

"What is _with_ all these interruptions today?"

I ignored Marco and looked at Jake. "Do you think that might be Jessica and the others?"

"Maybe."

"Why would you say that…?" Sharon asked.

"Jessica pulled a bit of a stunt earlier to distract a guard and janitor that were about to get in the way," Jake clarified. "They're using holograms as disguises, like we were."

"It sure sounds like her," Sharon said. "Those were all placeholder names my husband uses for unidentified suspects and victims."

"Then they're kind of in trouble," I pointed out. "Who knows what the airport staff will do when no one shows up to get them?"

"They'd call the police," Sharon said. Then she sighed. "I could go get them, but I'd have to avoid Mark if he's a Controller like you said. He knows I only have one kid, not to mention that my last name isn't 'Smith.'"

"You should avoid him anyway," Marco said. "The Yeerks probably want to make you a host to get to Jessica faster."

"Who is he?" I asked. "Jessica didn't recognize him."

"He's a PhD student, I'm his supervisor. We were in Osaka to present a paper we worked on together." She shook her head. "I'd noticed he'd been acting a little disinterested the past couple of months, but he didn't seem _that_ different…"

"Not to be rude, but I think we should do something sooner rather than later," Marco said. "I say Sharon goes to get them, and we stick by her as flies. Or something else that's small, anyway. Then we get out of here."

"Right," Jake said. "Sure."

Remember how I said we hitched a ride on a plane in fly morphs, once? And how I said it was a bad idea? Jake got swatted while we were on that plane. I personally helped scrape his guts off the ceiling to carry them to the toilet, so he could demorph without being seen. Half of his body was missing by the time we got there. He _almost_ died.

And then we did the whole fly thing over again for the return flight. I was the only one who noticed how much it troubled Jake, but even when I'd pulled him aside to confront him about it he brushed it off. Like, he admitted to me that he was scared, but told me he'd just have to suck it up because he's the leader or something.

So I was not at all convinced by his 'right' and his 'sure.'

I wasn't sure what to do about it either, though. Jake would have just brushed it off again if I'd made a big deal out of it. And it _did_ seem the easiest way out. I ended up just shooting Marco a dirty look.

"Hey, what do you want from me?" he said. "We just land on Sharon and stay there. Easy and safe." Then he turned to Sharon. "You wouldn't swat us, right?"

"You're seriously going to change into flies?" Sharon asked. "How does that work? Where does the mass go?"

≺It gets stored in Zero-space. See, space and time are –≻

"Ax, please just be quiet and morph," Jake said while his first changes set in.


	16. Chapter 16

**Chapter 16**

* * *

We hid on the inside of Sharon's shirt sleeves. That seemed like the safest place, although my fly instincts didn't exactly agree. It was pretty hard to resist the urge to fly away, especially when the sleeve would hit her arm and squish me a little.

Unfortunately we couldn't really see anything from where we were. Not that we would've seen much if we had been elsewhere, though; compound eyes are really bad and near-sighted. Flies also can't really hear, although with practice, we figured out how to interpret voices from the vibrations that the hairs on our back pick up. But of course Sharon couldn't really talk to us after leaving the restroom. She'd look insane.

The lack of anything to focus on other than restraining the fly instincts made it hard not to be constantly reminded of what happened to Jake. So I can't imagine what Jake must have been going through.

≺Are you okay?≻ I asked him privately.

≺No. Are you?≻

≺No, not really.≻ I admitted.

≺Are your parents still angry with you?≻

I suppose he was trying to change the subject, so I went along with it, even though I didn't really want to talk about that. ≺Yeah. I honestly don't know _what_ they'll do when I don't show up when Dad comes pick me up after school. They've _already_ given me every punishment they've ever given me all at once…≻

≺My parents are also going to throw a fit if they figure out I'm skipping school again…≻

≺I feel so awful for making such a big deal about my parents being angry with me. Rachel, Jordan, Tobias, Ax… They don't even _have_ family around them anymore to worry about them.≻

≺I'm sure they understand, Cassie.≻

Our conversation was cut short by Sharon's voice. We both focused on interpreting it.

"Hi, there was an announcement about my kids being here?" She made a point of sounding like she was really worried.

"Mrs. Smith?" a woman answered. "Yeah, they're here."

"Oh, thank God… I've been searching all over."

"They made quite a mess of themselves, you might not want them back," the woman joked. "Follow me, they're in the employee bathroom."

"What'd they do?"

"Alice spilled a whole cup of grape juice over herself, the others, and a wall. That's when my colleagues picked them up and brought them here."

"Oh, no."

I heard a door open. Or more accurately, I felt the pressure wave.

"Mom!"

Sharon suddenly swung her arm up, probably to avoid us getting crushed by Jessica's hug. For a moment I could make out two vague teen-sized blobs through the gap between Sharon's arm and sleeve. They smelled very nice to my fly senses. Very sweet. Between the pressure waves and their smell, I _almost_ lost control.

Almost.

≺Wait, is that one of you guys?≻ Tobias asked.

≺Yes,≻ Ax answered from Sharon's other sleeve. ≺We are inside Sharon's sleeves, but Marco flew away.≻

≺And landed on… oh man.≻

≺L-landed whe-OAH!≻ Marco yelped. ≺Did someone try to swat me?!≻

≺Rachel, be careful!≻ Tobias urged.

≺Did _Rachel_ swat me?!≻ Marco demanded. ≺What did I do? Am I safe from her where I am now?≻

≺You're on Jordan's shoulder now, I think.≻

≺Is that good or bad?≻

≺Better than the middle of Rachel's – Cut it out, you're gonna throw me off your shoulder and mess up Erek's hologram!≻

Well, it must have been a sensitive subject, wherever it was.

The next couple of minutes were pretty uneventful again. Sharon thanked the staff members for their help, and then went to look for some place that was out of the way enough for us to talk. Meanwhile, Jake brought everyone up to speed about how Sharon wasn't a Controller and how she took the news.

Eventually Sharon addressed us again. "So… what should I do now? Go to my car?"

≺Before anything else,≻ Marco interrupted, ≺Rachel, would you mind telling me why you almost killed me?≻

"I only waved you away, you big baby," she muttered. Then she quickly changed the subject. "Is everyone here?"

≺Yeah,≻ Jake answered. ≺If Erek is.≻

"Right behind you."

"Then can we get out of here? Or at least clean my hologram? Or let me take a _shower_ in my hologram?"

≺Let's just go to the parking lot and work from there.≻

On our way there, we decided to go to the university campus using just Sharon's car. Erek had to stay with Jessica for her hologram, and Jessica and Sharon refused to split up, so it was the only way.

Erek didn't seem to mind leaving his car behind, though. I guess it was probably a hologram as well, in which case he could just make a new one. Or maybe he'd turn invisible and run back to get it later. He can run _really_ fast.

When we got to Sharon's car, Erek made a large invisibility hologram around Jake, Marco, Ax, and me, so we could demorph without being seen. We'd have to morph something small again after that because the car was way too small for nine people, but birds would do, and birds are way more comfortable to be in than flies.

There weren't a lot of people around in the parking garage, so there was no risk of anyone running into us while we were invisible. But there was still CCTV everywhere, so Erek didn't want to clean up Rachel and Jordan's holograms until we were all in the car.

Marco burst out laughing when he got his human eyes again and could see the state of them. Rachel looked particularly messed up. She'd clearly attempted to rinse her shirt and pants earlier, but it just spread the stains out all over. And she was still soaking wet from it.

"Love what you did with your outfit, Rachel!"

She responded with a particularly fake and sarcastic smile.

"Hey, don't give _her_ all the credit, it was my design," Jessica laughed along.

"I _told_ you washing it like that wouldn't work," Jordan added.

"Yeah? And how would _you_ know?"

"Mom told me plenty of times while washing my clothes. With how obsessed you are about stains I'd have thought you'd know how to get rid of them."

"I know how to _avoid_ them in the first place. Unlike _someone_."

"Clearly," Jessica chuckled.

When we all finally got inside the car, Erek surrounded the whole thing in a hologram like he did with his own car earlier, and got rid of the remaining disguises.

"Finally!" Rachel sighed.

Sharon didn't start her car yet. She was silently looking at Jessica. This was the first time she could see the real state of her, head and shoulder wounds and all. Jessica looked back at her guiltily for a second. Then she looked away again.

"Are you okay?" Sharon asked.

"I guess… Are you angry with me?"

"No, honey, why would I be?"

"I don't think I _ever_ got myself into _this_ much trouble before…"

She nudged her head at the lot of us in the backseats. "Figures that if aliens would exist, you'd find yourself a way to get mixed up with them," she said lightheartedly. "But, for once, this isn't your fault. Really, I'm just glad you're okay."

Jessica didn't respond for a while, so Sharon started the car and headed for the exit.

"I'm glad you're not a Controller," she eventually said.

Sharon reached for her shoulder for comfort. "Your new friends told me that Dennis…"

She stopped. I think she wasn't sure how to put it.

"…shot me?" Jessica finished for her.

"What? H-he…?"

We hadn't told her that part in our short rundown of the situation, so we took the time to do that now. We also introduced ourselves a little better. We were stuck in traffic, anyway.

The conversation fell silent for a few minutes after that. I guess Sharon was trying to come to terms with the fact that the human race was being defended by a handful of teenagers. I don't think that had quite registered with her until then. Neither had the part about Yeerk control being absolute enough for someone to shoot their own daughter.

"What about all your parents?" she eventually asked us. "Are they all Controllers?"

"My mom is…" Jordan said.

≺So is Marco's, and my brother's a Controller,≻ Jake continued. ≺The rest of them aren't, for as far as we know.≻

"Do they know what's going on?"

≺No. It's too dangerous. You're actually the first adult who knows.≻

"Then where do they think you are, right now? Shouldn't you all be in school?"

I looked down. Memories of getting yelled at yesterday washed over me.

"Mom and Dad think Rachel and I are dead, so…" Jordan responded miserably.

≺My parents would probably think I'm either looking for drugs or selling them,≻ I added, equally miserably, when no one else said anything. ≺They at least think I'm addicted because of all the lying I've had to do… And they're worried sick about how the people who supposedly killed Rachel could be coming for me as well.≻

"Why would it be so dangerous to tell them?"

≺The more people know about us, the more danger we're in,≻ Marco explained. ≺The whole reason we had to fake Rachel and Jordan's deaths is because their mom was infested and her Yeerk suspected them. We'd have all been dead right now if she'd known the whole truth.≻

"But you told _me_. What if _I_ get infested?"

"Don't say that…" Jessica complained.

≺That's why you and Jessica have to hide with Rachel and Jordan from now on,≻ Marco continued coldly. ≺We can't _let_ you be infested.≻

Sharon was silent for a few seconds before continuing. "I think there's something you kids need to understand about parents. They would literally walk through fire to keep their kids safe. _I_ would walk through fire to keep _Jessica_ safe. Any self-respecting parent would rather throw their life away and go into hiding with their kids than live thinking they're dead, in danger, or throwing _their_ lives away."

≺What about if you found out that Jessica was fighting the Yeerks along with us, huh? You'd try to stop her, because it's dangerous. But we _have_ to keep fighting. If we don't, soon there won't be anything left to fight _for._ ≻

"They'd fight _instead_ of you. It shouldn't be up to a couple of kids to save all of humanity."

≺No,≻ Jake said firmly. ≺I agree with Marco. Their willingness to do anything to keep us safe would just make things harder for us. We have morphing on our side, they don't.≻

≺We have the blue box, though…≻ I thought out loud. That's how we usually refer to the Escafil device, the thing that passes on morphing abilities.

≺You'd willingly rope your parents into all this?≻ Marco said incredulously. ≺Seriously?≻

I wasn't actually all that sure yet. But the way Sharon was dealing with the whole thing got me thinking…

She didn't call the police. She wasn't angry with Jessica. She sort of just accepted this new reality and went along with it. Would my parents do the same?

And if they could morph, they'd be just as capable of getting themselves out of a sticky situation as the rest of us. So as long as Jake, Marco, and I didn't have to hide away, I figured they wouldn't have to either, which means we wouldn't even have to leave home. Everything would stay sort of normal, but I wouldn't have to lie to them anymore!

Unfortunately, it turned out to not be quite that simple.

≺The Escafil device would not let you,≻ Ax said simply.

We stared at him. None of us saw that one coming.

≺There are security features embedded into the device to make it difficult for morphing technology to be passed on in unauthorized ways,≻ he elaborated. ≺Specifically, only someone who can morph can pass it on, only from their natural form, and only to someone of younger or equal age. I would have expected it to also not work on other species, but clearly I was mistaken. Perhaps because the Escafil device was developed long before Seerow's Kindness was instated.≻

≺This would have been handy to know earlier, Ax,≻ Jake complained.

≺I am sorry. You never asked.≻

≺Either way, my Dad doesn't need to know that I've been _almost_ dead more often than I can count, and that Mom is _worse_ than dead,≻ Marco said.

≺I can't tell my parents either,≻ Jake said. ≺There's just no way they wouldn't risk literally everything to try to save Tom. I tried that already, and it didn't end well.≻

Sharon stopped trying to convince us at that point. Or maybe Jake and Marco had convinced _her_.

But the idea stuck with me. Would it not be so bad to tell my parents, after all?


	17. Chapter 17

**Chapter 17**

* * *

It turns out that the university has a sort of hospital annex. They even have a department specializing in brain research. Ax wasn't impressed by anything Sharon told us about it, but for human standards, it'd be perfect for figuring this whole immunity thing out.

Sharon didn't work at that department, of course, being a chemistry professor. But there was a chemical storage room in the basement of the hospital that she had access to. Coincidentally, that's also where some of the hospital's laboratories were, where they analyze blood samples and stuff.

Even better, she knew someone who worked in one of those. His name is Hank. He'd graduated under her a couple years ago, and they kept in touch. When he was hired by the hospital, he'd received training to take all kinds of samples from people, in addition to analyzing them. Blood samples, obviously, but also something called cerebrospinal fluid. That's the stuff that surrounds your brain, I learned. If there was anything unusual about Jessica's brain chemistry, surely it'd show up there, right?

Of course, we had no easy way of knowing whether Hank was a Controller. We could've done the whole Visser Three thing over again, but the fewer people who know about us, the better. Instead, Sharon said she'd probably be able to convince him to help without asking questions by saying it's police business from her husband. Even if he'd be a Controller, his Yeerk wouldn't have any reason not to go along with that.

Unfortunately, Jessica couldn't be in her hologram disguise while Hank would take the samples. Erek was worried that Hank might not be able to find the right spots for the needles otherwise, because the holograms make us look a little bigger. And I guess it'd probably be bad if he'd accidentally sting Jessica's brain or something.

We just had to hope he wouldn't recognize her. Fortunately, he'd never met Jessica, and Ax considered it unlikely for the Yeerks to have sent out a picture of her to everyone already.

Only Erek and I would follow Sharon and Jessica inside. That way, the rest of us could morph birds of prey to look out for any Yeerk activity outside. They'd also more easily be able to find a place to morph something more dangerous if something would go wrong.

I'd stay in my seagull morph until we'd get to the lab, so Erek could take me inside on his shoulder, and easily make both of us invisible. When we'd get there, Erek would expand the invisibility hologram to let me change into my Yeerk form. He said he'd be able to keep me invisible even while infesting Jessica, so Hank wouldn't notice a thing, Controller or not.

I'll be honest, though; in hindsight, we were kind of rushing the whole thing. After all, now that Sharon and Jessica were both on our side, we had all the time in the world to come up with a better, safer plan. But we felt like we were running down the home stretch, so we went through with it anyway.

Everyone changed into their designated morphs and disguises when we got close to the university campus. Sharon first drove us to one of its more deserted areas, so the ones who were on bird-of-prey duty could leave the car without attracting attention. Then she parked at the employees-only lot by the hospital.

For a moment, she just sat there, staring at her steering wheel. Then she turned to her right.

"Are you _sure_ you're okay with this, honey? Being… infested again, I mean?"

"Look, Mom, I'll be fine. Cassie's not a real Yeerk. And if there's any chance of all this helping Kim and Dad, I _have_ to do it."

Sharon stroked Jessica's back for a second, while deciding if that response was good enough for her. Then she turned to Erek and me. "And you're _sure_ it's safe?"

≺I promise,≻ I said, trying my best to sound confident. In truth, the thought of morphing a Yeerk and infesting someone terrified me, but it's much easier to lie with thought-speak than it is with regular speech. Sharon bought it.

And so, she finally left the car and took us into the hospital.

The first floor looked just like any other hospital. White walls and floors, signs hanging from the ceiling and on the walls telling people where the various wards were, and lots of people of all ages interspersed with doctors and nurses in white and light blue uniforms. But the basement was completely different. It kind of reminded me of the employee tunnels of The Gardens. The walls were unpainted concrete, and there was exposed plumbing and wiring suspended from the ceiling. There also weren't nearly as many people around, but it was unfortunately not completely deserted.

Sharon took us to the chemical storage room to let Erek disable Jessica's hologram without anyone seeing it happen. Then she quickly took us to Hank's lab.

She knocked on the door. A man dressed in a white lab coat opened it.

"Oh, hey, Sharon, what brings you here?"

"Hey, Hank. Can we come in?"

He looked at Jessica. He seemed a little confused, but if he was a Controller and he recognized her, he was definitely hiding it well.

"Sure."

The lab looked a little like my school's chemistry lab, but bigger, and with a bit more equipment. There were no windows, it being a basement and all, and Hank was the only one there, so I figured no one would see us. There were white workbenches all along the sides, which Erek decided to crawl underneath. That gave me plenty of room to demorph without risk of Hank bumping into me.

I looked at the clock hanging on the wall opposite to me. 3:10 PM. Dad was probably already at school, waiting to pick me up. My parents were going to kill me.

"So, who're you, then?" Hank asked Jessica, trying to make conversation with her in an attempt to put her at ease a little.

"Alice," she said, feigning shyness.

"I need a favor," Sharon said before he could ask anything else. "I need you to take a couple samples of Alice's blood and CSF. One set now, and another in a couple minutes. Can you do that for me?"

Hank frowned and scratched his head. "Um… Suuure… Why?"

"It's better you don't know… And don't tell anyone about this, either."

He looked between the two of them a few times. "Well, this isn't sketchy at all," he eventually said.

"It's not as bad as it sounds. It's a police thing, my husband asked me to do this. Alice is a witness to something, I think, but he asked me not to ask any questions. Witness protection, and all. I _promise_. Please?"

Fortunately Hank was the obedient type. He threw his hands up and walked over to one of the nearby cabinets. "Okay, whatever you say…"

≺Guys, can you hear me?≻ I called out. I wasn't sure if they'd be in range.

≺Yeah, we hear you,≻ Jake answered. ≺Is everything okay?≻

≺Yeah. We're in the lab. I don't think Hank is a Controller, or at least he didn't recognize Jessica. And Sharon easily convinced him to help.≻

≺Awesome. Keep us posted. Nothing strange going on here, by the way.≻

It took Hank about five minutes to take the first set of samples. Apparently that brain fluid, or CSF as they were calling it, is actually extracted from your back somehow. Don't ask me how that works. But at least I wouldn't have to worry about Hank stinging me later.

"There, all done. You're being very brave," Hank said to Jessica, to which she faked a smile. Then he turned to Sharon and sort of casually pulled her to the other side of the room.

"Do you know if Alice has any conditions?" he whispered. I was still in seagull morph, so I could hear him just fine.

"W-why?" Sharon whispered back.

"I'm a little worried about her CSF. It's not normally this cloudy."

"What does that mean?"

"I don't know, I just run the tests and report the numbers. Which is what I'm trying to say – I think you should get her checked out properly."

Sharon looked at Jessica helplessly. After all, she knew she wouldn't be able to do that. Then she looked back at Hank.

"O-okay, I'll pass that along. But it's not up to me."

He shrugged. "Okay. So, what now? Another set of samples in a few minutes, you said? I suppose I shouldn't ask why?"

Sharon nodded.

So now it was my turn.


	18. Chapter 18

**Chapter 18**

* * *

My friends tell me I have a talent for morphing. And they're probably right. I think I don't tire as easily as the others, and I can kind of choose which parts of my body morph first. For instance, when I'm demorphing from my seagull or osprey form, I can keep my wings until the very end. Jake once said it makes me look like an angel.

But man, morphing a Yeerk? That was _not_ something that my morphing talent could make pretty.

I figured I'd shrink first, but it wasn't really working. Maybe I was just too terrified to control it.

The first thing I noticed was my fingers melting together. The same thing happened to my toes. Then my lips. I also saw my nose disappear from the corner of my eyes, but somehow I could still breathe. My hair sort of pulled itself back into my head, and I could feel my ears disappear. It sounded like I'd covered them with my hands.

All those things were pretty normal for as far as I was concerned.

But then my skin and morphing suit started melting away entirely. They were replaced by a sort of translucent grayish-green slime, making me look like I'd been skinned alive and just crawled out of a bath filled with mucus.

It's a good thing I no longer had a functioning mouth, because I would have screamed loud enough for all the medics in the hospital to come running, concrete basement or not.

The slime went everywhere. I felt it in my mouth. It tasted metallic, like blood, but especially its texture made me want to gag. I felt it in what was left of my ear canals. In my esophagus. In my airway, in my stomach, my lungs… I felt like I was drowning in it. Then it went into my eyes, blurring my vision. I instinctively tried to wipe and blink it away, but my hands only made it worse, and I didn't have eyelids anymore.

Finally, I felt it cover my heart, which promptly stopped beating.

Rationally I knew I'd be fine… After all, it was hardly the first time I'd ever morphed. But the sensation of my heart stopping and shriveling away?

≺AAAAAAAAH!≻

Well, at least I could thought-scream, now.

≺Whoa, bad morph, huh?≻ Marco asked.

≺My heart stopped!≻

≺Yeerks do not have the equivalent of a human heart,≻ Ax said calmly.

≺Oh man. A heartless Cassie, is that even possible?≻ Marco joked.

I suppose that was _almost_ a compliment. But let's just say I wasn't amused at the time.

≺Sorry, I couldn't help myself.≻

It took every inch of me to make me calm down and focus on my morph again. If I wouldn't have, the morphing process would have stopped midway.

The next thing I felt was my bones disappearing into nothingness. Also jarring, but at least that was a sensation I'd gotten used to from all the insect morphs. I think I was also finally shrinking, but it was hard to tell, because I was already completely blind.

Most of the physical changes finished about half a minute after the worst of my freak-out. Then the Yeerk's mind merged with mine. Between my panic and my new body being so foreign to me, it took me a while to take control.

I sensed my surroundings.

I was on a dry floor, made of a chemically resistant material. It was moderately clean, but there was some chemical residue on it that I couldn't quite identify.

The air around me was a mere 67 degrees. It was only moderately humid, but very rich in nitrogen. Highly uncomfortable, but survivable.

There was no Kandrona source nearby. I would need to find one within about forty hours, or I would die.

I was in a very large room, so large that I could not sense the walls. The only object nearby seemed to be a male human teenager.

The human was looking at me, but made no attempt to hurt me. Thus, it was either a Controller, or it did not know what Yeerks are.

Negligible chance of survival on my own. Moderate chance of survival with another Controller. High chance of survival if I would take this human as my host.

I crawled in his direction. He extended his hand to me, so I crawled onto it.

Something was wrong. His skin felt artificial. Dead. Like an android of some kind.

Erek?

The human part of my mind had finally calmed down enough to assert itself again.

In retrospect, controlling the Yeerk morph wasn't nearly as bad as some of the other morphs I've been in. I'd kind of expected that. Usually, the more intelligent a being is, the less powerful its instincts are.

But it _was_ very strange. It was somehow colder and more rational than any other form I've ever been in.

Like humans and most Earth animals, the Yeerk mind was focused on personal survival. But our instincts are more… short term in comparison.

Hungry? Find food. Scared? Flee, or maybe fight. Cold? Find shelter. Short-term survival at all costs.

A Yeerk would instinctively go hungry if it _knew_ that eating more would not be sustainable in the long run. A Yeerk would instinctively ignore fear if it _knew_ there would be a good chance of some reward later. And a Yeerk would instinctively stay put and ignore discomfort if it _knew_ moving elsewhere wouldn't improve anything over time. _Long-term_ survival at all costs.

My Yeerk mind didn't even seem to understand the concept of short-term survival. It made me crawl to Erek because it figured he was the only way of eventually getting to a Yeerk pool, knowing full well that he could easily kill me. Any small Earth animal smart enough to understand that big things are dangerous would have sat really still or tried to run away instead.

It's a little hard to put into words, but in any case, it was extremely uncomfortable to the human part of my mind. So I wanted to get this over with as quickly as possible.

≺Okay, I'm as ready as I'll ever be…≻

A moment later, a new human shape seemed to appear out of nowhere. Jessica.

I'm not sure _how_ I sensed her. Or how I sensed Erek, for that matter. It was sort of like echolocation without sound. But whatever it was clearly couldn't penetrate Erek's invisibility hologram, even in the outgoing direction. I guess that's why my Yeerk instincts initially thought I was in a very large room.

Jessica reached her hand out to me. I crawled onto it.

Only then did I realize how good a Yeerk's sense of touch is. I could feel the individual ridges in her skin, the rapid nervous shaking of her hand, the slower shaking of her heartbeat, the irregular muscle spasms when she lifted me up… I could even sense the electricity from the nerves inside her hand.

Jessica moved her hand up to her ear, which kicked the Yeerk's instincts into overdrive. I wasn't even sure what was happening yet by the time I found myself inside her ear canal.

I'd flattened myself, but still only barely fit. Waxy walls were pushing against me from all sides. It was terribly claustrophobic to my human instincts, but my Yeerk instincts were in full control.

I secreted something. A form of sedative, my Yeerk mind knew. After all, there isn't exactly a direct path from someone's ear to their brain. I had to make one. But I have to admit I'd never really thought about that until then.

My Yeerk instincts flattened the front side of my body even more than I thought was possible, and pushed it forward into her flesh. It was like I was jamming a knife into Jessica's head, and I was the knife! I could only pray that the Yeerk mind knew what it was doing.

When I penetrated the final layer of tissue, a wave of electrical signals overcame me. I flattened out the rest of my body, stretching out into the crevices underneath me. The crevices of Jessica's brain.

There was electricity everywhere, and at first it felt amazing. My Yeerk mind quickly figured out what the pulses of electricity meant.

Sight. Hearing. Touch. Temperature. Smell. Taste. Pain. Balance.

Thoughts.

– _hate this, I hate this, I hate this, why me? Why always me? Why do I always have to get myself in trouble like this? Why_ –

It felt really wrong, hearing her private thoughts like that. They were none of my business. But I couldn't block them out, at least not entirely. They were always just kind of there in the background. That was normal as far as my Yeerk mind was concerned, but nothing else was.

I couldn't control her, I could only sense! It felt like I was paralyzed! It… Well, it actually felt a lot like being _controlled_ by a Yeerk, but the Yeerk mind didn't recognize that feeling. It panicked.

– _she doing? Is it working or isn't – YAAAAAH –_

I felt Jessica's body wince. Then she closed her eyes, which let me see what she was thinking, instead. It didn't make much sense, though. It was like a jumbled mess of memories that I could sense were painful to her. She also felt like she was being torn apart or burnt alive or something, even though I didn't sense any physical pain from her body aside from her bullet and head wounds.

It took me a second before I caught on to what was happening. My Yeerk mind was inflicting pain because its host wasn't cooperating!

Stop!

– _AAAaaahh… W-why… Why did she do that…? Did they… Did they trick me? Is this a real Yeerk? Please don't –_

≺No, I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I didn't mean to!≻ I told her using an ability that felt like thought-speak, but wasn't quite the same. It might as well have been private thought-speak, though.

– _Should I believe her? Or it? I – Yes. The Yeerk truly feels sorry, I can sense it. It's Cassie. –_

She slowly opened her eyes again and took a deep breath.

≺Cassie, _please_ don't do that again…≻

≺I won't! I swear! My instincts are really panicked, I couldn't help it… I'm really sorry…≻

≺Okay…≻

I continued in normal thought-speak, so my friends would hear as well. ≺O-okay… So… I'm inside Jessica, but I feel like I'm paralyzed or something. I can sense her thoughts, I can talk to her, and I can apparently inflict pain… b-but I can't make her do anything. It's like everything is numb.≻

≺Interesting,≻ Ax said. ≺That means it is repeatable, and that it was not caused by a Yeerk disease of some kind. Some chemical in Jessica's body must be affecting the Yeerk's biochemistry, or perhaps this Yeerk and Jessica have some genetic incompatibility.≻

≺No way. That Yeerk could control _me_ way better than I can control Jessica right now, but it still couldn't control me completely. And Hank said there was something weird about her brain fluid stuff.≻

≺Hmm. Then perhaps a residual amount of the chemical stayed behind in the Yeerk's body when it left Jessica?≻

≺The real Yeerk could also give me visions while it did the pain thing…≻ Jessica told me. She looked down, and her sight kind of blurred to make way for –

* * *

 _I was on an operating table, without any sedatives. My arms, legs, and chest were restrained using leather straps, so tight that they were bruising me. My skull was clamped to the table with a sort of vise, so it couldn't move at all. They had taped my mouth shut. There was a mirror above me, letting me watch a doctor shave most of my hair off._

 _I could feel blood flowing from my shoulder wound at an alarming rate, but the doctor wasn't interested in that. He was only interested in my head._

 _He put the razor away and replaced it with an angle grinder._

 _I squeezed my eyes shut, not wanting to see it. Then I flailed madly around myself and shook my head free somehow. When I opened my eyes again, I was back at the barn._

* * *

Her normal vision returned, and she looked up again. ≺Let's just get this over with,≻ she added, like nothing happened.

≺W-was that… one of those visions?≻

≺Huh? You could see that?≻

≺Like I was there, see it, feel it… I couldn't even look away.≻

≺Oh… Y-yeah, that was just before I rang your doorbell two days ago. I didn't think a Yeerk wouldn't be able to block that out.≻

≺I think they normally can… At least, it felt somehow wrong that I couldn't. But yeah, let Hank take the second set of samples, then I can get out of here. I'm not enjoying this any more than you are.≻

"O-okay, I'm ready," I sort of heard myself say in Jessica's voice. It was really weird.

That's when the lab door flung open, and several men armed with Dracon beams barged in. Mark was one of them. He must have followed us to the hospital, realizing that Marco wasn't the real Visser Three.

"What –" was all Hank managed to say before they stunned us. Jessica and I blacked out before we could do a thing.


	19. Chapter 19

**Chapter 19**

* * *

I woke up first.

Jessica was lying face-down on the floor, but that was about all I could sense, and even that felt numb. Everything was dark, there was no train of thought, and I didn't hear anything. The electricity from Jessica's brain was weak.

I panicked.

≺Guys? Is anyone out there?!≻ I shouted to my friends. But there was no response.

I wanted to do more, _anything_ else. But that was literally all I could do.

Well, my Yeerk mind informed me that I could leave Jessica. But it also informed me that would probably be suicide. So I did nothing.

Slowly but surely the electricity started flaring up again. In bursts at first, showing me blurred images, like feverish dreams. Eventually Jessica shot up with a burst of adrenaline, instantly wide awake.

– _What happened? Where am I? Am I in danger? –_

She looked around. We were in a cube-like room, made of featureless, dimly lit black steel.

– _I'm trapped! No way out! What do I do?!_ "Where am I?! Somebody help me!"

She frantically spun around a few more times, looking for an exit that wasn't there.

≺Jessica, calm down.≻

≺Cassie?!≻

≺ _Calm down._ There's nothing we can do right now. Save your strength.≻

≺You're as panicked as I am!≻

≺Yes, but there's nothing we can do!≻

She looked at the floor, but continued pacing around.

– _that, I'm not gonna sit here and do nothing. Think, Jess, think. How do you get out of this…_ whatever _this is? –_

≺It's a Yeerk prison. I've been in one before. We're on one of their ships.≻

≺But you got out?≻

I thought back to the last time. We'd been captured, all of us. We were doomed, considering suicide missions to at least do some damage and everything. Heck, we were considering morphing _ants_ again to try to find a way out.

But the impossible happened. A group of Hork-Bajir loyal to Visser One released us and gave us directions to the escape pods.

She didn't do it because of Marco, of course; she had no idea Marco was one of us. She just wanted to make Visser Three look bad, because Visser Three was fishing for a promotion, which would have reduced her influence.

In any case, we would have surely died or been infested if not for her.

≺How can you tell me to calm down when the last time this happened you literally only got out because of dumb luck?!≻

≺You saw that memory?≻

≺Yes, I did.≻

I guess I _had_ wanted her to see it.

≺You're wearing a watch, right? What time is it?≻

She looked at it. 3:35 PM. About twenty minutes into my Yeerk morph.

≺Why?≻ she asked.

≺We can only stay in morph for two hours at a time. Otherwise we get stuck forever. And I _really_ don't want to get stuck in Yeerk form…≻

≺Then just leave me now and demorph.≻

≺That's a bad idea… The Yeerks are probably monitoring this cell, and they might not know I'm an Animorph or Andalite or whatever yet. Maybe we can surprise them later.≻

≺No, I don't think that's it. I can sense your feelings, remember? You're _worried_ right now, not courageous. About your friends and family? If you morph back, and they see you, they'll know who you are. That's it, right?≻

≺Right…≻ I responded weakly.

It was such a weird experience, being able to sense each other like that. We could keep no secrets from each other now, not even little things like that. It was like a Vulcan mind meld from _Star Trek_ or something.

It was worse for Jessica, of course, considering I could sense even her internal thoughts, but still. Feelings and strong memories could not be hidden in either direction.

≺What do you think happened to Mom?≻

≺I… I-it really depends. Maybe my friends managed to free her before the Yeerks could infest her. But… they couldn't free _us_ … so…≻

– _So she's a Controller now. Well done, Jess. Your mom and best friend are Controllers and you're trapped because you couldn't mind your own freaking business for just once in your life! –_

She kicked one of the walls hard enough to hurt her foot. Then she sat down in a corner and crossed her arms angrily.

It wasn't long before some of her memories started showing up. As much as I tried to block them out, not wanting to infringe on her privacy, I simply couldn't.

* * *

 _I sat down at an empty table in the school cafeteria and took my lunchbox out of my bag. Then I stared ahead of me, lost in thought. Kim sat down opposite to me a minute later._

" _Uh oh," she said._

" _What?" I responded, feigning innocence._

" _You have that look on your face. What're we going to get in trouble for this time?"_

" _Hey, last time was your idea."_

 _Kim had seen what we thought was a stray puppy while we were cycling home from school together a week ago. It looked scared and hungry, so she wanted to help it. She'd practically put it in her backpack to take it home with her when its owner appeared._

" _It's not_ my _fault that puppy's owner was an idiot. At least there wasn't any police involved this time."_

" _There easily could have been."_

 _Kim was referring to the time we'd caught a guy spraying graffiti in an alley. He was at least five years older than we were, but he was alone. I called him out on it after convincing Kim to back me up._

 _He didn't take kindly to that. In hindsight, we were lucky that he only shouted at us. But that caught the attention of some police officer who happened to be nearby. The guy ran, and we were blamed for the graffiti. Dad believed our story, but the police still had us clean walls for a day._

" _So, what is it this time?"_

" _It could be our biggest thing yet."_

 _She groaned._

" _It has to be a secret. Dad already told me to stop looking into it."_

" _You're gonna get us killed sometime. You know that, right?"_

" _Promise you'll keep it a secret."_

" _Of course I promise."_

" _Last weekend Dad told me over dinner that he'd found out that there's a weirdly large amount of missing people in this county compared to the rest of the state. He said the only link he could find was that a lot of those people were members of this club thing called The Sharing."_

" _I've heard about them," Kim said with her mouth full, then swallowed. "It's a social thing, right?"_

" _Not if they're kidnapping people."_

" _Are they?"_

" _I don't know. The thing is, yesterday evening Dad suddenly denied all of it. He said he'd made a mistake about the statistic or something. And then he even said it might be nice if we would both join The Sharing, like some kind of father-daughter thing."_

 _Kim frowned. "So what did you tell him?"_

" _Duh, 'pass.' Like I'd go hanging out with a bunch of kidnappers."_

" _I dunno, that_ does _sound like something you would do," she grinned. "To catch them, that is."_

" _Hah-hah."_

" _But are you sure he… well, didn't just make a mistake, like he said?"_

" _Yes, because there was something… weird about him. Like someone was_ making _him say those things."_

" _Whoa. Are you serious?"_

" _Yeah."_

" _So, like a corruption thing, then?"_

" _I don't think Dad would buy into that sort of thing… But I_ do _think something might be going on that's actually worth investigating, and he just doesn't want me to get involved."_

 _She sighed. "So what're you saying? 'Let's go mess with these people who could be kidnappers, because my dad told me not to?'"_

" _I don't think it's_ actually _that bad. Why would Dad try to get me to join their group, otherwise?"_

* * *

" _Hi," I said to Kim's mom as she opened the door. "Is Kim home?"_

" _Yeah, come in, she's in her room. Would you like something to drink?"_

" _No, thanks!" I called back to her, already halfway up the stairs._

" _Oh, hey," Kim said as I barged into her room. "I was just starting to work on that stupid math –"_

" _You won't_ believe _what happened yesterday."_

 _Kim sighed, recognizing trouble. "Jess…"_

" _Dad's pager went off, telling him that the police needed reinforcements at the mall. I followed him on my bike, and guess what? The_ whole place _was on lockdown. Like, the_ whole _square. But that wasn't even the weirdest thing! There were two_ rhinos _there!"_

" _Excuse me? Rhinos?"_

" _They came out of nowhere. Then they ran straight through the police blockade, and straight through the windows next to the mall entrance! All the policemen were shooting at them, too, but they didn't even care!"_

" _Wait, wasn't there a thing on the news about the mall yesterday evening? Something about a gas leak that caused hallucinations? You sure you're okay?"_

" _That's what Dad told me when he got home, too. But I went back to the mall this morning. The entrance was_ completely _obliterated. If those rhinos had been a hallucination, there wouldn't have been any damage, right?"_

 _Kim thought about that for a moment, then nodded hesitantly._

" _But that's not all. Dad basically said The Sharing is involved."_

" _Huh? I figured you'd given up on that by now. What'd_ they _do?"_

" _They're holding a meeting this evening for people who were involved in the 'gas leak.' Dad told me to go, too. I think they're trying to cover up what really happened. So I'm_ going _, all right."_

 _I proudly held up the disposable camera I'd bought that morning._

" _And you want me to go with you to back you up."_

 _I nodded expectantly. She sighed._

" _Okay, fine. But not because I believe you, and only if you help me with our math homework, first."_

" _Deal."_

* * *

" _No!" Kim shrieked as the rhino stepped on Rachel's head. I felt my dinner come up._

 _Get your act together, Jess! There is an actual freaking murder happening right now! I grabbed my camera again. It had fallen on the grass, so I'm sure it was fine. I sort of aimed it in the direction of the scene and started snapping pictures without bothering with the viewfinder, because I just couldn't take my eyes off of Rachel._

 _The woman was hunched down over her now. She was screaming and twitching madly at first, but then she suddenly quieted down, got up, and left, carrying the expression of a robot._

 _That expression reminded me of Dad. He'd act similarly whenever I'd bring up The Sharing. It wasn't nearly as intense, but… If The Sharing really_ was _kidnapping and murdering people somehow, and Dad was trying to get me to join them…_

 _Had they… whoever "they" are… really gotten to Dad?_

 _My camera ran out of film._

" _I-I can't take any more of this…" Kim whimpered._

 _I took my eyes off of what was left of Rachel to look around. The animals had left, and most people had run away already._

" _Come on," I said, and pulled Kim along with me as I ran back to our bicycles._

* * *

" _We need to talk to the police, tell them what happened," Kim said dejectedly when we got to the nearest alley that seemed safe. I looked at her. She was still crying. I guess I was, too._

 _I set my bike down against the wall and stared at the ground. I pictured myself getting trampled by that rhino, and Dad acting the same way about it as the woman had. Then I closed my eyes and shook my head, trying to block the vision out._

" _Jess…"_

" _D-did you see how that woman just walked away after freaking out? Almost like a robot?"_

" _Y-yeah…?"_

 _I let myself lean back against the wall and tried to blink my tears away, but I couldn't get it out of my head._

 _Then I felt terrible even imagining it. That's Dad I'm thinking about! Of course he wouldn't do anything like that._

 _Would he?_

 _I covered my face, and let my back slide down along the wall until I reached the ground. Then I broke down completely._

 _Two seconds later, I felt Kim sit next to me. She put her arm around me._

" _Talk to me, Jess…"_

" _R-remember how I told you that my dad's been acting weird lately?"_

" _Yeah…"_

" _I-I don't know, b-but… That woman… H-her body language was just like my dad's when he acts strange like that…"_

 _Kim was silent for a while. When she finally figured out what to say, I immediately interrupted her with what was on my mind._

" _You think –"_

" _We can't go to the police. Or my dad. They're involved, somehow. No one can know we were even here."_

 _I looked her in the eyes. She looked away._

" _B-but… How can I keep quiet about this? I just watched a girl from school die!"_

 _I covered my face again. I didn't know what to say to that. This was all so horrifying…_

* * *

 _It'd been ten days since Kim and I watched Rachel die in the park. Three days since I'd sent the photos to the police anonymous tip address._

 _Kim and I were cycling home from school. We had to work on a geography group project together, so she was coming to my place with me._

 _Kim seemed to have mostly put the events from two weeks ago behind her. At least, she'd stopped talking about it. But I still wasn't sure what to make of Dad's strange behavior. Mom would be at a conference in Japan for the next couple of days, so I was kind of glad that Kim was coming along with me. I felt a little safer with her around._

" _Dad, I'm home," I called out when I got inside with Kim. I didn't want to raise_ any _kind of suspicion, so I always tried to behave like I otherwise would have. Plus, I hadn't really told Kim that I was borderline scared of my dad now, because of how awful I felt for even thinking such a thing._

 _No response. Strange, the front door was unlocked. I frowned. Kim didn't notice, and headed upstairs to my room. I followed behind her. I'd just entered my room behind her when she suddenly shrieked and froze. I turned to see what she was looking at, and saw my dad sitting on my desk chair._

 _He was carrying his robot expression. And he was casually pointing his service gun at us. I put my hands up instinctively._

" _Dad?!"_

" _Shut your mouth, human!" he snapped. Then he threw a roll of duct tape to Kim. She'd been much too startled to catch it, but it fell on the floor next to her._

" _Tape Jessica's hands behind her back," he added, showing no emotion whatsoever._

" _D-dad, w-what are you… W-why don't you relax, put down the gun, and we –"_

 _I heard a loud bang. Kim shrieked again, but I was too dumbfounded to._

 _Dad shot me. Dad_ shot _me! In my shoulder!_

* * *

 _I heard the gate open behind me again. When I turned around, I saw Dad. For a moment I was irrationally relieved, thinking he was coming to save us. But relief turned to horror as I watched two of the bladed snake-neck aliens roughly shove him into the cage with us and close the door behind him._

 _We stared at each other for a moment. He was crying, too, now, and looked easily as depressed as everyone else inside the cage. Then he broke down, kneeling before me to hug me tightly. "I'm so sorry," he squealed. He released me again after a couple seconds to take my coat off and tear the duct tape from my wrists to free them. Then he slowly reached for my shoulder, visibly shaking. I winced as he gently touched it._

" _Why?" I whimpered._

 _He squeezed his eyes shut. "I… I tried everything I could to stop it… b-but he was too strong…"_

" _Who?" I asked after staring at him for a few seconds._

 _He didn't have time to respond. The gate opened again, and two of the bladed aliens entered the cage. They pushed us out of the way, and then grabbed Kim._

" _Jess! Help!" she screamed in agony, trying to shake herself free from their grip._

" _Kim!" I jumped up and threw myself at the aliens to try to release her._

" _Jess, no!" I heard Dad behind me, just before feeling something hit the side of my head. I blacked out._

* * *

 _Dad shook me awake. I jumped up and looked around._

" _Kim?!" I yelled, but she was nowhere to be found. Dad shushed me to try to calm me down, but he didn't say it was going to be okay, as he used to always do. He just hugged me again._

" _What did they do to Kim?"_

" _They infested her," a depressed voice behind me said indifferently._

 _I looked around again. There were different people in the cage now. As I turned, I felt a sharp pain in my head, squeezed my eyes shut, and slowly faced forward again. My brain felt like it was about to explode. I think there was a big gash on the right side of my head, too, because it stung and felt wet and sticky. And my right eye wouldn't open all the way. But my sudden headache drowned out all the other aches._

" _Jess, look at me," Dad urged. I slowly opened my eyes. "We don't have much time, they're coming for you, next. Don't struggle; it'll only make the Yeerk want to hurt you more. There is no escaping them. Just know… know that I'll always love you, okay?" He was tearing up again. "No matter what the Yeerk makes you do, it's not_ you _doing it. Understand?"_

 _I didn't understand everything, but I understood the part that mattered. So I nodded. Then I hugged him, ignoring the pain in my head and shoulder, and buried my face in his chest. He hugged me back._

" _I-I love you too, Daddy…"_

* * *

 _Finally, out of that horrible place. But where do I go now?_

 _No good places came to mind, so I decided to work the other way around. Where_ couldn't _I go?_

 _The hospital. Home. Kim's place. School. Anywhere not within walking distance, because I didn't have any money on me. My other friends' places, because the Yeerks would come looking for me there, too. Any place that had a strong likelihood of a Yeerk presence would be out of the question._

 _That triumphant feeling, again. Constantly feeling both my own emotions and practically the opposite from the Yeerk at the same time was really starting to get on my nerves._

≺ _Anything to add?≻ I asked irritably._

≺ _There is no place you can go where they won't find you eventually.≻_

 _I wondered if all Yeerks were pricks. If they were, could I use that? After all, I could tell something was weird about my dad. I didn't know it was because of a freaking alien inside his head, but now that I knew about them, could I guess who would be under their control and who wouldn't be?_

 _It was pretty subtle, though. If Dad hadn't been my dad, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have noticed anything weird. I'd only be able to reliably guess for people I know well._

 _I would have trusted Kim, but, well… obviously not anymore. I figured Mom would have been a safe bet, but she wouldn't be in the country for a while. Plus, I don't think she'd know what to do with a bullet wound._

 _Who would, anyway? I didn't know any doctors or nurses. Or, well… maybe… the "Wildlife something Clinic?"_

 _Dad once told me that the police would bring wildlife there every once in a while, when someone would run into some wild animal and the animal survived. They would then try to patch it up and eventually release it again. It was run by a man and his daughter as a sort of charity thing. The man would be a vet of course, not a doctor, but he should at least have_ some _idea of how to treat a bullet wound, right?_

 _More importantly, I figured that if he'd be under Yeerk control, he'd have long closed down the clinic. After all, what reason would an alien invasion force have to take care of Earth wildlife as a charity?_

 _I could tell that my Yeerk was disgusted at the thought. So I was right. Then he felt very annoyed that I'd figured it out. Practically with his help, too._

≺ _What's your name, anyway?≻_

 _He didn't respond._

≺ _Fine, I'll call you Alan, then.≻_

 _I knew approximately where the clinic was. It'd easily be a two-hour walk, though._

 _Couldn't be helped. At least I'd have time to figure out what to tell them when I'd get there._

* * *

≺Wait, can you see my memories?≻

≺Huh? Oh, uhm, yeah… I'm sorry. I can't really block them out…≻

She shook her head. ≺It's fine. What does it matter? I'm sure we'll be dead soon, anyways.≻

≺How'd you figure it out?≻

≺Your feelings seemed to be following along with my train of thought. I just guessed.≻ _I wonder how Cassie got roped into all this. They said they've been fighting the Yeerks for, what, half a year now? How –_

So I showed her some of my memories, too. How I got my morphing powers, how I was almost infested in that first week, how I'd actually gotten infested by Aftran later.

≺So not all Yeerks are bad, huh?≻ she remarked about the last one.

≺No. At least I don't think so. Wait, you agree?≻

She shrugged and shook her head ever so slightly. ≺I don't know. I guess. Doesn't make it any easier for us, though.≻

≺No, it doesn't. It just makes it harder.≻

I showed her how bad I felt about the Yeerk blaming me for killing itself, and how guilty I felt about morphing into it later.

≺Poor Alan,≻ she said.

≺Why'd you name him, anyway?≻

≺I don't know. It just felt right. I guess I felt a bit sorry for him. Some of his emotions… It felt like he was picked on by other Yeerks. Disrespected.≻

≺Maybe that's why he wouldn't tell you his name. Yeerks don't really _have_ names, they sort of have designations. I don't know exactly how it works, but I think the higher the number is, the lowlier the Yeerk. And, no offense, but it would make sense that he was assigned to you, then. Yeerks can't really use school-going girls for much.≻

≺Yeah, I know. I was only infested because I knew too much.≻ She sighed. ≺He was just so frustrated about not being able to control me. This is totally Stockholm syndrome though.≻

≺Huh?≻

≺It's a psychological thing. Hostages sometimes feel bad for their captors, too. To the point where they'll sometimes come to their defense when the police arrives. I don't think people know why it happens, but, well, it happens. That's what my dad told me at some point, anyway.≻

Suddenly the ground shook. A couple seconds later, the left wall of the cell became clear. There was an Andalite behind it.

Visser Three.

One thing was for sure. I'd never feel bad for _him_.


	20. Chapter 20

**Chapter 20**

* * *

≺Well, well, well. Kerflar twenty-nine-five-one, is it? I wonder. Are you a traitor, or have you been having a little trouble controlling your host the past few days?≻

"Let me out," Jessica said defiantly.

I would have winced if I could. Every Controller within earshot definitely did. When Visser Three gets angry, there tend to be casualties.

But he just frowned. ≺Is this pathetic human girl truly a Controller?≻ he asked no one in particular.

" _Ka_ Visser," a nearby Hork-Bajir responded, using their weird Hork-Bajir-English hybrid. "Sensors _gafach_ human _kawatno_ Controller."

Visser Three shot Jessica a look that could melt steel. She looked back at him a bit less stubbornly.

≺Take her to the lab,≻ he finally said. ≺Find out why Kerflar twenty-nine-five-one defected or is incapable of controlling this human. I also want to know why the Andalite bandits were interested in her. I will be in the lab in fifteen minutes to receive your full report.≻

He walked away. Two Hork-Bajir took his place in front of the window, and then the whole wall just disappeared. They stepped through and grabbed Jessica.

"Let me go, I can walk on my own."

They didn't.

≺Don't struggle, you'll just get yourself hurt on their blades,≻ I advised.

The Hork-Bajir took us out of the Blade ship into the huge hallways of the mothership. I remembered watching Rachel run through them in her elephant morph when we escaped the last time. She only barely fit, and practically obliterated everything in her path.

Jessica saw the memory too. She chuckled at it. The Hork-Bajir ignored her.

We went down a few levels by means of a dropshaft. It's like an elevator without a cabin. You just think the level you want to go to and it levitates you there. Not that it listened to _our_ thoughts while we were being escorted, of course.

They took us down a few more hallways to finally drop us off in a room around thirty by forty feet in size. There were about a dozen Taxxons along the edges controlling computer terminals. In the middle of the room were several tables with some kind of equipment suspended over them. Other than the Taxxons, there were two human Controllers waiting for us. There were also two Gedds standing beside the door on the inside of the room.

Gedds are creatures from the Yeerk homeworld. They look sort of like awkward blue apes. The Yeerks consider them inferior hosts now that they've reached out across the stars, so they're only used for the lowliest chores by the lowliest Yeerks. I've never even seen one on Earth.

"This is the human?" the male Controller asked the Hork-Bajir.

" _Ka_. Visser _garach_ connection _gaffnur_ _Hruthin_ fast!"

The female Controller quickly stepped toward Jessica and injected something into her neck. It didn't really hurt, but within seconds Jessica went completely limp.

– _happening?! I can't move! I can't move! –_

They carried her to the middle table. Jessica's head lolled sideways involuntarily.

"You there, come over here," the man said.

"Yech, chir."

A moment later, Jessica felt something furry lie down next to her, opposite to where she was facing.

"Kerflar twenty-nine-five-one and the one controlling this Gedd, swap hosts or you will be extracted by force," the woman said.

She didn't make option two sound very pleasant.

– _has to leave? Oh no, she wouldn't leave me behind here, would she? –_

≺Of course I won't. I'll be back for you, I promise! Try to hide your memories of us from the Yeerk, just think about something unrelated constantly!≻

≺I-I'll try…≻

I felt horrible for leaving her like that, but I didn't have a choice.

When I was outside, my radar senses started working again. I sensed that the Gedd's Yeerk was already making its way to Jessica's ear.

I briefly considered demorphing, but that would have just been stupid, with that many Controllers around. No, the only way out of this was to infest that poor Gedd, if there _was_ a way out at all. So I let my Yeerk instincts take over again, and a minute later I was inside it.

All its senses were worse than those of a human. But it could see and hear. Its body was as limp as Jessica's, but even if it hadn't been, I don't think I could've controlled it. Whatever made Jessica immune was still giving me trouble.

The Gedd didn't have much of a train of thought or memories to speak of. It was almost like I'd morphed into it. Just instincts. It also didn't really seem to mind being infested. Not being able to move scared it, but it had no sense of what was happening beyond that.

"Human Controller, identify yourself," the man said.

Jessica didn't respond. The two Controllers demanded the same thing a couple more times before giving up and turning to me.

"You then. Explain yourself!"

I started trying to say something, but even if I _had_ figured out what to say to that, I couldn't use the Gedd's mouth. I simply didn't have enough control.

After a while of just silence from us, they ordered us to swap again, to which both of us obeyed.

– _let me out of here, I just want to go home, please, someone –_

≺I'm back,≻ I said weakly.

≺I-I'm scared… The Yeerk was hurting me constantly, demanding that I'd speak or open up my memories to him…≻

≺Did he see anything?≻

≺I don't think so… I just kept trying to recite the alphabet in my head backward to keep my mind busy…≻

"Explain yourself!" the man yelled desperately.

It was probably directed at the Gedd, because he mumbled something unintelligibly in response. Its Yeerk was probably _really_ trying, but just didn't have enough control, either.

"Idiot! Speak up! The Visser will be expecting a report within minutes!"

"Don't you understand what he will do to us if you don't cooperate?!" the woman added.

≺Please remind me. What _do_ I do to subordinates who fail to execute my orders?≻

"V-Visser! M-my sincerest apologies! We trie–"

She could not finish her sentence before Visser Three whacked her across the room, all the way through Jessica's line of sight. She was lucky to still be in one piece. If he'd used the sharp side of his tail…

≺You did not answer my question,≻ he said in his psychotically calm manner.

"Y-you kill them," the man said.

≺Correct. Now, report.≻

"W-w-we swapped K-Kerflar twenty-nine-five-one with the Yeerk of this G-Gedd… B-but…"

≺But?≻

"N-n-neither of them have said anything…"

Jessica was facing the wrong way to see what happened next, but what I think happened is that Visser Three shoved the man aside and put his tail blade against the poor Gedd's throat. When its Yeerk continued to fail to speak, he must have pushed it down, because there was a blood-chilling squeal, followed by the feeling of a sticky, warm liquid drenching the back of Jessica's shirt.

Then Visser Three turned to Jessica. He put his face right up to hers.

– _this guy, did he just kill that alien for no reason? I'll show him! I'll –_

≺You will talk to me. Who –≻

She spat in his face. She freaking spat in his face!

≺ARE YOU INSANE?!≻ I yelled at her.

≺We're dead anyway! Screw this guy!≻ she yelled back at me.

She regretted it instantly, though.

– _he's definitely angry now… Yeah, I'm sure he's_ real _impressed, Jess. He'll for_ sure _let you go, now. –_

It'd taken Visser Three a second or two to even process what just happened. Then he _completely_ lost his cool. He took the worst of his anger out on two of the Taxxons behind him, then a third when it started eating their remains.

≺Everyone LEAVE! You incompetent IMBECILES!≻ he yelled. Then he turned back to Jessica. He put his tail blade right up to her throat. ≺And you! YOU! You WILL talk to me!≻

Jessica stayed silent, but at this point it was just because she was frozen stiff. Her train of thought had flat-out stopped.

He slit it! He slit her throat! Not deep enough to kill her instantly, but still. Then a sharp pain from her right hand, I think he might have cut it off!

That was plenty to make Jessica scream her lungs out. She squeezed her eyes shut in pain, too, so I couldn't see anything for a while. Heck, I could hardly _sense_ anything anymore. The pain was absolutely overwhelming.

≺Somebody seal her wounds! I want her alive! ALIVE!≻

Jessica opened her eyes again out of sheer panic and horror when she felt cold, leathery Hork-Bajir claws pull her body upright and lift her right arm up. Her head lolled all the way forward, giving her a perfect view of her severed right hand.

– _My hand! He actually cut off my hand! Why did I have to open my big mouth?! He cut off my hand! –_

I was just as panicked. Visser Three was going to kill her, slowly and painfully, and I'd get a front row seat.

My parents! They'd never know! I'd be reported missing, and then… nothing. They'd… I don't know what they'd do. I didn't even say goodbye this morning! Would they think I had run away? That'd be so much worse than them _knowing_ I'm dead…

The people around us did something to Jessica's throat and wrist that made them sting worse than I thought was possible. I guess they were trying to stop the bleeding, but they weren't exactly careful. It was like they just dumped superglue into the wounds.

Heck, they might have. After all, they weren't exactly interested in how it'd heal in the long term. There wouldn't _be_ a long term.

It stung so bad that Jessica passed out after a few seconds, but I remained conscious. Her train of thought stopped suddenly, followed by her eyes closing and her senses going numb. Including her sense of pain, thankfully.

I thought she'd died at first. It took me a minute to realize that I could still feel the rhythm of her heartbeat in the pressure on my body. It was weak and a little erratic, but it was there.

For what seemed like an eternity, I was stuck with my own thoughts. About my parents, about Jake, about the others… But also about me. About all the things I'd never get to do. Finish school, become a real vet like my parents, get my own place…

Then I realized _no one_ would ever get to do those things ever again if my friends would fail to continue and end what we all started. So I forced myself to stop thinking about myself. _I_ didn't matter. All that mattered was that the Yeerks wouldn't find out who I am and who my friends are.

Jessica was eventually woken up by a jolt of electricity. One of Visser Three's servants had sort of tazed her awake.

– _Aaah! Where… What… –_

The paralysis drug had mostly worn off, so she could look around. She also tried to shake herself free, but she was strapped down to some kind of diagonal table. Just above her head was some nastily sharp-looking equipment.

≺Ah, it looks like you're somewhat conscious again. Well. My _former_ medical advisor informed me that it discovered traces of an unknown inorganic compound in your body. It theorized that this might be preventing us from controlling you, so it wanted to run further tests using the scanner over there. I disagreed. This will be much more satisfying to figure out using less subtle means. I'm sure there is much to learn from what is going on inside your head.≻

The machine above Jessica lowered down over her forehead, stopping just shy of her eyes.

All of Jessica's bravado was gone, now. He'd already broken her. Not that I would've lasted much longer.

"W-what does this thing do…?" she whimpered.

≺My _new_ medical advisor informed me that humans should be able to survive for a few hours without their skull, as long as it is cut away carefully enough. I suggest you keep still.≻

"I'll talk! I'll tell you everything you want to know! Please!"

≺Yes, you will. In a way.≻

He didn't really seem to care about questioning us anymore, because he turned the machine on, anyway. Jessica passed out a second or two in. Even with her numbed senses, I didn't last much longer.


	21. Chapter 21

**Chapter 21**

* * *

My Yeerk instincts immediately panicked when I woke up. Electricity from a host's brain, but no pressure on my body!

≺You're awake again?≻ Jessica thought to me slowly.

≺Jess! What happened?!≻

≺I think I'm dying… But at least I ruined that guy's day, right?≻ She smiled for a second, but then became depressed again.

She was lying curled up in the corner of one of the dimly lit Yeerk holding cells, staring dead ahead. Her arms and feet were tied together behind her back. Everything about her body hurt, her head most of all, and I could tell from my body temperature that she had a high fever. Her thoughts were sluggish.

≺Yeah, but –≻

≺I see someone get hurt, I stand up for them. I'm going to be a police officer later, like Dad. Help people in need. Like superheroes in comic books. That'd be nice.≻

Through her imagination, I saw her flying around through a comic book world. Nothing made any sense, but Jessica didn't seem to notice in her delirious state.

It was so heartbreaking to sense her like that… She was slowly slipping away, and there wasn't a thing I could do about it.

≺Jess…≻

Talking to her popped the fever dream like a balloon.

≺I guess real life isn't like the comic books. Evil won.≻

≺I-I feel terrible for asking… but… did you end up telling Visser Three about my friends?≻

≺I don't think I did. I woke up in here. I… I think my skull is gone…≻

≺If we get out of here… I _promise_ we'll make you morph. Morphing heals everything. We just have to get through this, somehow…≻

≺You don't believe we'll get out of here. I can sense it. But thanks for trying. You're nice. I think we could've become friends.≻

≺I'd have liked that…≻

Jessica retreated back into her imagination for a while after that. This time I didn't interrupt her.

I'd gone through the process of coming to terms with dying a couple times before, but all those times I had my usual friends with me, or was at least in a morph whose instincts I could surrender myself to. But not only would my Yeerk instincts not have made me feel any better, they'd probably have tried to hurt Jessica into submission again. So I was stuck with my own thoughts for a while. In hindsight, mine didn't make much more sense than Jessica's.

≺You should morph, Cass,≻ Jessica eventually interrupted my thoughts. ≺Find a way out. You and your friends should keep fighting.≻

Her thoughts were more coherent now. She'd been thinking things through. But I didn't like her conclusion.

≺Jess, we're not dead yet…≻

≺No, we're not dead yet. That's why you need to get out. They'll be back to question me, and I don't… I don't know how long I can keep your secrets like this… I-if he finds out who I am and hurts Kim or Dad to get me to talk…≻

≺Jess, please…≻

≺I think they bound me up like this so I can't… I think they sort of covered my head, but they probably know that I could just… If I'd fall on my head or something, I'm pretty sure I'd die.≻

≺You want me to demorph and kill you…≻

She didn't respond directly, but her emotions confirmed it.

It was like with the Yeerk, but so much worse… Like the Yeerk, she knew she was going to die sooner or later, and preferred the former. But the Yeerk did it out of spite and because it was logical. Jessica wanted to do it because she figured she'd save the most people that way. And despite how brave she tried to be, she was terrified. I could sense her subconsciousness crying and screaming for another way out.

Not to mention that the Yeerk ultimately killed _itself._ This time _I'd_ actually have to be the one to do the killing, or at least actively help Jessica do it.

≺I can't kill you… I just can't…≻

≺Yes, you can. It's easy. Just morph back while you're still wrapped around my brain. I'm sure that'd do the trick.≻

≺I won't! I'm _at least_ not morphing back until I have to. Show me the time.≻

She reluctantly moved her wrist and looked down to show me. 4:50 PM.

≺I have about twenty minutes left in my morph. Maybe… Maybe we can still figure something out!≻

≺Cassie, I'm done figuring things out… And I'm done hurting, and I'm done being angry at myself for getting Kim and Mom and all of you guys into this mess!≻

≺Jess, twenty more minutes… Don't give up, don't do this to me… If we get back to Earth, we'll make you morph. You'll stop hurting. Your mom will be there. Then we'll go find Kim and your dad!≻

≺You're a terrible liar, Cass. The Yeerks know who I am. Even _if_ we get out of here alive, they'll just hurt Kim and my parents to draw me out of hiding before we can do a thing about it. If I die here, and they know it, they wouldn't have any reason to do that.≻

≺But I can't go from one morph directly to another. If I morph here and they see me, they'll do the same thing to me!≻

She was silent for a little while.

≺Maybe I can hide you somehow while you're morphing,≻ she said eventually. ≺Like, maybe you can morph with your head under my shirt behind my back or something stupid like that. Then you morph something dangerous and wait for them to open the door.≻

≺That wouldn't really work if they're monitoring the cell…≻

≺Hey, at least you wouldn't die a Yeerk, right? And you could wait until the last moment to kill me when they decide to try to make me talk again.≻

I spent the next few minutes thinking it through.

The Yeerks would get everything they need to find me and my friends out of Jess if she stays here like this. So I either had to get her out of here, or, as much as I didn't want to even consider it, she would have to die.

There's no way I'd be able to do any of those things in Yeerk form, especially not while crippled by the lasting effects of Jess' immunity. So when the time comes, I'd _have_ to morph out, one way or another.

If the Yeerks would see my face, it'd _probably_ be all over for my friends and family, but, who knows. Maybe Erek would be able to hide them in time.

If Jessica's plan works and the Yeerks _don't_ see my face, my friends would be more or less fine. The Yeerks would surely start looking for strangely behaving kids, so they'd still have to hide… but they'd have a lot more time.

Finally, I guess I'd rather go out fighting in a more pleasant morph alongside Jessica, than do nothing and get tortured to death with her while stuck in Yeerk form.

≺Okay. I'll do it. I'll wait to the end of my morphing window, then I'll leave and crawl behind your back to demorph. Then I'll immediately morph wolf. They're too small to be infested and I know I can do some damage in that form. We'll go out fighting. Okay?≻

≺Deal.≻

Nothing else happened until 5:10 PM. Five minutes before I wouldn't be able to morph back. That was as close as I was willing to get.

≺Let's do this then, I guess…≻ I finally said.

≺Cass?≻ she said weakly.

≺Yeah?≻

≺Save Kim and my parents for me if you get out?≻

≺I-I will…≻

With that, I commanded my Yeerk instincts to leave her.


	22. Chapter 22

**Chapter 22**

* * *

Crawling behind her back was easy. Demorphing and keeping my head there, though… That was a challenge.

Demorphing the Yeerk wasn't any more pleasant than morphing it. And it took me a lot more effort than usual to do it. I'd really pushed the limit of the morphing window.

Jess' shirt could just _barely_ stretch far enough for my head back there, and I could just _barely_ breathe through the reeking mix of human and Gedd blood it was soaked in, but I managed, somehow. Now I just had to –

The bottom of Jess' shirt cut into my neck as she gasped in fear.

"How interesting, a human girl," a female voice said. I didn't immediately recognize it in my panic. "If you attempt to morph, I will stun you, and inject you with a little formula my scientists have been working on. It'd prevent you from morphing ever again until I decide otherwise. Now then, please show yourself. You two look ridiculous."

Trapped! I didn't consider that they could just stun me!

I had to do as I was told. That way, I'd still have a slight chance of morphing later, if she'd ever let her guard down. So I pulled myself away from Jessica's back and turned to who was talking to me.

Visser One.

Behind her were two fierce-looking Hork-Bajir and three human Controllers. Behind _them_ would be a whole army.

There was no way out. No way.

"You two look surprised to see me. Yes, the Council did not like how Visser Three almost killed the human that is somehow immune to Yeerk control, purely out of spite, without first developing an antidote. Fortunately, Visser Three only employs disloyal idiots, one of whom betrayed him by informing me. So, don't worry… Jessica, is it? That antidote is well underway."

Then she turned to me specifically.

"I must say _I_ am also surprised to see _you_ , though. You must be one of Visser Three's infamous 'Andalite' bandits. I have long suspected that you are not Andalites at all, but the Council and other Vissers refused to believe that a few humans could give Visser Three so much trouble. You have no idea how much I will enjoy seeing him demoted into nothingness when the Council finds out I was right. I suppose I _should_ thank you for that. But morph-capable hosts are much too valuable to me. I'm sure you understand."

She waited for me to say something. But I was completely frozen in fear.

"Pity, I would have enjoyed hearing you beg for death."

She turned to one of the Hork-Bajir.

"Inass two, hold the girl down."

He roughly grabbed me.

"Struggle or attempt to morph, and he will cut your limbs off," Visser One added. "Enough to hurt you temporarily, but not enough to kill you."

One of the human Controllers knelt down next to me and held her head close to mine. Then the second Hork-Bajir took hold of her. After all, she'd be free in a few seconds.

"Cass, I-I'm so sorry…" I heard Jess whimper behind me.

I would have responded. Told her it's okay, we tried our best. But I couldn't anymore.

The Yeerk was in control, now.

 _To be continued…_

* * *

This story is concluded in _The Rescue_. I would link it, but fanfiction won't let me, so the easiest way there is through my profile page.

Thank you for reading up to this point!


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